Posted at 6:52 a.m., Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Australia's Telstra to build telecom cable to Hawai'i
Associated Press
SYDNEY, Australia — Australia's Telstra Corp. plans to invest in a 5,600-mile undersea cable to Hawai'i to improve telecommunications links between Australia and the United States, the company said today.Telstra Chief Operations Officer Greg Winn said the cable would allow increased data transmission capability to the United States while significantly reducing Australia's reliance on foreign-owned companies in order to compete globally.
Telstra will pay Alcatel Submarine Networks, a specialist in such cabling, to build and lay the cable. The project is expected to be finished by mid-2008. Telstra did not say how much the new cable would cost.
"Telstra has an aggressive international connectivity strategy, and this is just the first step in bringing that strategy to life," Winn said in a statement.
The submarine cable will provide transmission capacity to Hawai'i where it will interconnect with other cables providing direct access to the U.S. Mainland.
"Owning the infrastructure that provides this vital connection to Australia enables Telstra to deliver additional network capacity and reliability to our retail and wholesale customers, and will maximize returns for shareholders when we reroute traffic from existing routes owned by competitors," Winn said.
