Vodafone NZ becomes Pacific Fibre's largest New Zealand customer

Pacific Fibre, an emerging submarine cable operator, has signed up Vodafone New Zealand as one of its first foundation customers.

Russell Stanners, Vodafone New Zealand's CEO, said that the emergence of the Pacific Fibre cable system will provide it with another option for international bandwidth capacity.

"This deal will allow us to scale our customer offers over the next 10 years delivering the quality and quantity of capacity that our customers need now and into the future," he said. "This will help us to support New Zealanders' online ambitions by making sure they can confidently connect to the world and the world can confidently connect to New Zealand."

As one of its largest deals in New Zealand, the agreement with Vodafone New Zealand comes not long after it secured deals with REANNZ, which runs New Zealand's 'Karen' science and education broadband network, and Australian ISP iiNet.

Set to carry traffic on a network that will be completed in 2014, a key piece of the Pacific Fibre submarine cable will be giving New Zealand service providers and other businesses a direct network bridge to the U.S. market.

"It's like parking New Zealand off the West Coast of America, removing the tyranny of distance," said Sir Stephen Tindall, a co-founder of Pacific Fibre.

For more:
- see the release

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