The Next cable will provide a new chapter for Southern Cross, but one that came too late to prevent Hawaiki Cable from muscling in on its monopoly on the US-NZ data route. A new US submarine internet cable will be built between New Zealand, Australia and the United States by the Southern Cross Cable company at a cost of US$350 million (NZ$520m). Southern Cross' monopoly on the New Zealand-US route was broken in July when the $445m Hawaiki Cable between New Zealand, Australia and the US went live. READ MORE* Telstra and Spark team up for $440m internet cable* $445m NZ internet cable opens for traffic* Southern Cross plots course for new cable* Tokelau: Just 65km away from fibre broadband, but can't connectSouthern Cross said its new Next cable would be able to carry 72 terabits of data per second – more than three times the capacity of its existing network. Spark currently owns 50 per cent of Southern Cross with Singapore's Singtel and US company Verizon owning the other half of the company.

Source: Stuff April 08, 2019 23:26 UTC