KEY POINTS:
When state-owned Kordia said this month that it was working on a plan for a fibre optic cable across the Tasman, its significance was less to do with faster international internet access than with security.
Contrary to what many might think, we don't suffer from inadequate international capacity,
believes Keith Davidson, head of InternetNZ, the body in charge of internet governance.
"The most important thing to us is that another cable would provide a divergent pathway."
Internet users are vulnerable to failure of the existing Southern Cross cable. When that link was commissioned in 2000, 50 per cent owner Telecom said it was engineered for 99.999 per cent availability, equating to a maximum of 50 minutes of network downtime every 10 years.
In reality, if the cable suffered a physical break - and Davidson is sure that's a matter of when, not if - repairs would take a little longer than a few minutes. "Southern Cross will break one day and it could be several days or weeks before it is restored."
The risk is not just of the cable being sliced through. Davidson says determined "script kiddies", or hackers, have the potential to launch a denial of service attack that could cripple the Southern Cross cable.
If a new link also put pricing pressure on Southern Cross, Davidson wouldn't complain. However, he sees some risk that a second transtasman bandwidth provider could take its place in the kind of cosy duopoly that exists between Telecom and Vodafone in the mobile phone market.
It might at least introduce a little transparency to pricing which, with Southern Cross registered in the Bahamas, is lacking at present.
Kordia, which provides transmission services to most broadcasters and also owns internet service provider Orcon, has signed a memorandum of understanding with Australian company Pipe International to collaborate on the transtasman link.
But details are sketchy. Pipe is in the process of laying fibre from Sydney to Guam, a link it is calling PPC-1. PPC-1 has been designed with a branching unit in waters 120km east of Sydney for connecting with a cable from Auckland, PPC-2.
The Sydney-Guam cable is expected to be in operation by June next year, says Pipe managing director Bevan Slattery. He can't say when work on PPC-2 will get under way, nor how the project cost and cable ownership will be divided up with Kordia, except that Kordia will be the majority owner. The two companies were independently working on transtasman cable plans when they were brought to each other's notice by a third party six months ago, Slattery said.
Whether the Kordia-Pipe deal would survive a change of government is a key question. Davidson doubts National would put the kibosh on the plan.
"I believe the major political parties are seeing our requirements for better communications with the rest of the world as an absolute priority."
Internet bandwidth is viewed if not as "essential" infrastructure, then as the next notch down, he says.
Indeed, if the decision was left to National communications spokesman Maurice Williamson, it would proceed, but he says the party's finance and state-owned enterprises spokespeople will undoubtedly have a say as well.
Williamson says he's heard so many complaints from Southern Cross customers of "ludicrous" pricing that he unreservedly supports breaking the Tasman fibre monopoly.
If he has a concern, it's with Kordia's role in the ISP market as owner of Orcon, which he would want to look closely at if he was communications minister.
Kordia general counsel Michael Jamieson says other ISPs can rest assured that Orcon won't be able to buy capacity on PPC-2 at preferential pricing. "We operate Orcon at arm's length and offer it the same terms and conditions as other wholesale customers," he says.
Kordia will be investing "tens of millions" of dollars in PPC-2, Jamieson says, which should be open for business in 2010.
The company has had expressions of interest from potential customers, but no firm commitments yet.
Internet users probably don't care too much about the added security of a second cable - not until the day there's a serious outage, at any rate. But they'll be glad of more abundant, cheaper bandwidth.
PPC-2 will initially provide 240Gbit/s of capacity, expandable to 1.92Tbit/s. Southern Cross, meanwhile, is undergoing an upgrade which will boost its capacity to 860Gbit/s by the end of this year. Its ultimate capacity is reportedly 2.4Tbit/s.
Davidson says he's heard speculation that a third transtasman cable could be in the planning as well.
Staying connected
* New Zealand and Australia are already linked by the Southern Cross. Cable, 50 per cent owned by Telecom.
* Now state-owned Kordia says it is planning a transtasman fibre optic link.
* Another link would offer security in case the existing cable is broken or hit by a hacking attack.
* More capacity could also reduce prices.
* Kordia says the new link should be operating by 2010.
Anthony Doesburg is an Auckland-based technology journalist