Southern Cross NEXT Cable Enters Construction Phase

SYDNEY & WELLINGTON, New Zealand & LONDON & BOSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Southern Cross Cable Network (SCCN) and Pioneer Consulting are pleased to announce that the Southern Cross NEXT project has achieved CIF (Contract in Force) and has entered the construction project phase.

“The addition of the Southern Cross NEXT route to our platform will provide existing and future customers with further resiliency and connectivity options between Australia, New Zealand and the United States.”

“The achievement of CIF is a testament to the hard work of the combined Southern Cross and Pioneer Consulting team over many months and is a validation of the technology and expertise behind the new cable,” said Southern Cross President and CEO, Laurie Miller. “The addition of the Southern Cross NEXT route to our platform will provide existing and future customers with further resiliency and connectivity options between Australia, New Zealand and the United States.”

“From our initial guidance on the network’s overall design and technical specifications, to providing commercial and procurement support, we are delighted to continue to work with Southern Cross on the next phase of this robust network through to system in service,” said Pioneer Consulting Managing Partner, Keith Schofield.

Southern Cross NEXT will be the largest capacity link providing data-centre connectivity between Sydney, Auckland and Los Angeles. Given its robust design and route including branches, the 16,148km cable system will provide the lowest latency path from Australia and New Zealand to the United States. The new route will also provide critical international cable connectivity to the Pacific Islands of Fiji, Tokelau and Kiribati.

“We can now firmly focus on the implementation and deployment of the NEXT system which promises to bring greater resiliency, redundancy and capacity to our extensive network, along with the ongoing development of product enhancements to meet the evolving requirements of our customers,” said Southern Cross CTO, Dean Veverka.

The Southern Cross NEXT system has been designed and developed to be an extension of the existing Southern Cross two-cable ecosystem and will allow customers to leverage Southern Cross’ extensive point-of-presence network and access infrastructure already in place. It will also enable Southern Cross NEXT customers to flexibly assign new and existing capacity across the Pacific’s three routes, maximising diversity and resiliency.

Southern Cross NEXT is the result of a network investment of around US$300 million by Southern Cross, and is designed to carry 72 terabits per second of traffic – roughly the equivalent of simultaneously streaming 4.6 million ultra-high definition movies – ensuring Southern Cross can cater for its customers’ growing data requirements well into the future.

Services offered on the new system will be an extension and integration of the services offered across the current Southern Cross platform. The construction is being funded by a combination of capacity payments, equity contributions and financing.

With significant work already completed including pre-sales, marine survey, landing arrangements, Pacific Island agreements, detail design and the cable RFT, the Southern Cross NEXT project is well positioned to meet its target completion date of end 2021-early 2022.

About Southern Cross
Southern Cross Cable Network provides fast, direct, and secure international bandwidth from Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii to the heart of the Internet in the USA. The Southern Cross Cable Network comprises two submarine communications cables which were first commissioned in November 2000 and January 2001. They provide Australasian broadband users with high speed, resilient international connections to the US West coast where global Internet hubs are located. The Southern Cross Cable Network is currently owned by Spark NZ, Singtel/Optus, Verizon Business and Telstra. Southern Cross Cable Network has offices in Bermuda, Sydney, Auckland and Wellington. For more information visit Southern Cross at https://www.southerncrosscables.com/.

About Pioneer Consulting
Pioneer Consulting offers a comprehensive set of services for the submarine fibre optic telecommunication system industry including turnkey project management, financial and technical due diligence, engineering and implementation and market and technical studies. For further information about Pioneer Consulting visit https://www.pioneerconsulting.com or send an e-mail to: [email protected].