Why is Pacific Fibre needed?

Rapidly growing demand

Demand for international capacity from Australasia rose by 55% per year from 2002 to 2010, and will keep rising, according to the subsea fibre optic cable industry’s leading independent research firm TeleGeography.

This ever-increasing demand is driven by several factors:

First, the number of internet enabled devices is rapidly increasing, expanding beyond desktops to laptops, netbooks, tablets and smartphones such as Android and iPhone. The total amount of individual time spent using the internet continues to increase as always-on high speed internet connections are a necessary part of how we work, live and play, wherever we are..

Second, the volume of data per person and per device are both also increasing rapidly. Video file sizes, for example, are increasing sharply as the resolutions of videos we watch rise from postage stamp to full HD and beyond.

It is also becoming normal to store and share photo collections online on Facebook, Flickr, Picassa and other sites, or to backup business files entire into sites like DropBox.

Business applications such as SalesForce, Xero and Google Apps are penetrating the corporate world, and they require high speed low latency connections to be effective. High speed secure circuits are required for the corporate versions of these applications as cloud based computing solutions change the way in which businesses deploy IT infrastructure. The move of personal and business data from local or network storage into the internet cloud results in ever increasing demand for capacity to transfer the massive amounts of data we each have.

Finally, there is pent-up demand that is being unleashed as networks are upgraded. The Australian and New Zealand Government’s national broadband network initiatives, along with significant industry investment, are addressing the current “last mile” copper wire bottleneck into the home. However, in removing the bottleneck from the last mile, the constraint increasingly shifts to the international connections.

Pacific Fibre seeks to support these domestic investments by helping the industry address the future demands for international capacity.

New Zealand and Australia’s broadband will only ever be as fast as the narrowest point.

While content delivery networks and domestic hosting can help, the lion’s share of the Australasian internet demand is for content hosted in the USA. Removing the international capacity bottleneck will be an integral part of the Governments’ and the telecommunications industry’s delivery on the promise of high speed broadband.

Forecast supply constraint

While existing cable systems have unused capacity, the exponentially increasing demand is forecast by TeleGeography to outstrip that capacity well before 2020, even assuming a degree of cable upgradability. Cable projects take years to develop and implement, and Pacific Fibre will be in place in time to address the increased need for market supply.

Latest Technology

Pacific Fibre’s system will be at least 6 years newer than competitor systems, and 12-14 years newer than the main competitor’s. System life is typcially 25 years.

By using the latest technology Pacific Fibre’s system will have more capacity per fibre as it launches, and greater ability to upgrade the capacity of each fibre as new technology arrives.

 

Steady Progress

Pacific Fibre’s team has global experience in establishing and operating submarine fibre-optic cable projects, and are making steady progress towards ready for service (RFS) date.
Keep up with the latest by following our news, and find out more about the technical details of the system.