Called PP-1, the cable will include a spur connecting Madang in Papua New Guinea. The cable represents a significant boost to Australia’s international broadband capacity, as the main trunk of PPC-1 will be a 2-pair fibre cable capable of delivering 1.92 Terabits of data per second.
Pipe Networks managing director Bevan Slattery told the 2008 Pacific Telecommunications Council conference in Hawaii that the project was a significant expansion of the company’s core business as an independent network infrastructure builder, owner and operator.
Foundation customers who can be identified at this time include VSNL, Telikom PNG, iiNet, Internode and Primus. Other domestic and international customer contracts and counterparties cannot be disclosed due to confidentiality restrictions.
“Foundation customers of PPC-1 are the real champions of competition. These customers are leading the drive for change. They wanted a change from the same old overpriced bandwidth product available for the past 8 years,” Mr Slattery said.
“All Australians will benefit from their vision and belief that the days of paying too much money for too little bandwidth had to end,” he said.
iiNet CEO Michael Malone said the bottleneck in internet access in this country has been in the international links, not in the access network.
“This project signals the first entirely new cable delivered to Australia in eight years and will deliver more capacity for bandwidth-starved Australians,” Mr Malone said.
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