Telstra, Vodafone, Telecom NZ issue submarine cable tender for Australia-New Zealand link

Telstra (ASX: TLS.AX), Vodafone and Telecom New Zealand have put forward a tender for their proposed Tasman Global Access (TGA) submarine cable linking New Zealand and Australia.

The three service providers said in a joint statement that they expect to get responses to the tenders by August, while the contract for the $60 million cable is expected to be awarded by the end of 2013.

TGA, which will incorporate three fiber pairs with a design capacity of 30 Tbps, will be equally owned by the three service providers.

They are now evaluating landing sites in both Australia and New Zealand, but according to a report in itnews Auckland and Sydney are the likely locations.

Once the contract is awarded, the three companies expect the build out of the cable which will begin next year, will be operational by 2015.

Building this cable will help both countries deal with the growth in overall Internet traffic. When the trio announced TGA in February, they said "about 40 percent of both Telecom and Vodafone's international internet traffic is now Australia to New Zealand, versus just 10% in 2000."

 For more:
- itnews has this article

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