INTELIA NEW ZEALAND today [23 January 2024] announced a new submarine cable project that will link #Invercargill to both #Sydney and #Melbourne. The project is called TE WAIPOUNAMU submarine cable in reference to the Maori name of the South Island of New Zealand.
The 3,000 km system will include a total of 16 fiber pairs broken down as follow:
✅ 4 fiber pairs from Invercargill to Australia offering a total capacity of 120 Tbps
✅ 12 fiber pairs between Sydney and Melbourne allowing an alternative and very competitive backhauling option between the two largest cities of Australia with a total capacity of 35 Tbps per fiber pair.
With an expected latency under 25 milliseconds, Te Waipounamu submarine cable will be the fastest high-capacity link between #New Zealand and #Australia, representing a significant advantage especially for #Christchurch – the second largest city of New Zealand – and for #Dunedin which has always been ahead of New Zealand digital development. The cable will also be a strategic infrastructure for the whole country in terms of redundancy offering a perfect back-up solution to existing North Island submarine cables.
“Te Waipounamu cable is going to be a game changer for the connectivity of NZ South Island. It will also unlock the huge potential of Southland in term of sustainable data storage. It’s a fantastic challenge for our team and we are proud to continue contributing to New Zealand digital development” declared Rémi Galasso, founder of Intelia NZ.
“Te Waipounamu cable represent a significant investment of NZD 160 million that will be funded by a mix of equity, debt and capacity contract commitments from major industry players both in Australia and New Zealand” added Perrine DHALLUIN, Director at Intelia NZ.
“Our plan is to finalize a supplier contract by April 2024 and start in parallel the permitting process in order to target a system commissioning by 2026” added Georges Krebs, Chief Technical Officer at Intelia NZ.
