More Pacific bandwidth

come November

Southern Cross has announced that the 29,000-kilometre cable network, purpose-built for the Internet, would be Ready For Service (RFS) on November 15, 2000.

“While making this commitment, we continue to target date of 31 October 2000,”

CEO Baldo Sutich said.

“This is a si pificant achievement given the difficulties Southern Cross and other cable systems have had obtaining permits to land on the US mainland.

“It was only made possible by an initiative we took in 1999 to obtain the necessary authorisations to land at Nedonna Beach, Oregon,” he said.

At RFS, Southern Cross will deliver a network incorporating a full fibre ring linking Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Hawaii and a direct link from Hawaii

(Oahu) to Nedonna Beach in Oregon. All nine Southern Cross cable stations will be ‘live’ and, apart from the Hawaii-US section, fill redundancy will be delivered.

Combining what was to have been two RFS dates, into a new single RFS date, also means that the Southern Cross will make more capacity available to customers at the earliest possible time.

“With demand for bandwidth so high this is an important development,” said Sutich. Total capacity sales of the Southern Cross Cable Network have already reached US$l.2 billion.

With the permitting necessary for Oregon now secured, the Southern Cross cable will land at Nedonna Beach, Oregon in mid-April. The landing will mark the start of cable laying between Oregon and Oahu. ■