http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10823806 :(
Edit: More here: http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/pacific-fibre-sales-hit-200m-says-will-be-fully-funded-mid-june-ck-116187
![]() ![]() ![]() |
|
Twitter: ajobbins
Pacific Fibre to Cease Operations
The Pacific Fibre board today resolved to cease operations, citing an inability to raise the NZ$400m required to fund the cable build.
Pacific Fibre launched in March 2010 and planned to build a 13,000km high-speed fibre-optic cable connecting New Zealand and Australia to California.
“A 13,000km cable is clearly an audacious thing to try and do. We were fortunate to find supportive shareholders, fantastic staff and early customer support from the likes of REANNZ and Vodafone” said chairman Sam Morgan.
“We’ve spent millions of shareholder funds trying to get this done and despite getting some good investor support we have not been able to find the level of investment required in New Zealand initially and more broadly offshore.”
“The global investment market is undoubtedly difficult at the moment but we knew this was always going to be hard, regardless of our timing.”
“We started Pacific Fibre because we know how important it is to connect New Zealanders to global markets. The high cost of broadband in New Zealand makes it hard to connect globally and it is this market failure, not a technical failure, that we tried hard to solve” said co-founder and director Rod Drury.
“We still cannot see how the government’s investment in UFB makes sense until the price of international bandwidth is greatly reduced” said Mr Drury.
In September 2011, the Australian telecommunication research company Market Clarity reported the cost of bandwidth to the U.S. from New Zealand as 5.8 times greater than the price paid by Australians.
“This project had encouraging early momentum and we were pleased to attract a great team and board, and shareholders who invested because they felt passionately that this problem needs solving for New Zealand”, said Mr Morgan. We believed funding for these long term infrastructure investments would have been more readily available and were confident the business case was solid.”
“We feel like we’ve done everything we can to succeed and we are all hugely disappointed that we have not managed to get there.”
“We’d like to thank our staff, shareholders, customers, partners and supporters”, Mr Morgan ended.
Please support Geekzone by subscribing, or using one of our referral links: Samsung | AliExpress | Wise | Sharesies | Hatch | GoodSync | Backblaze backup
ajobbins: What a shame. NZ will continue to be held to ransom for international bandwidth by Southern Cross Cable.
The threat of Pac Fibre along helped to bring some of their prices down, however with the threat now gone we are unlikely to see further reductions, and may even see increases over time.
This is not good news for New Zealand
Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.
sbiddle:
There is far more to costs, including domestic transit and more importantly domestic peering and connectivity - something Australia doesn't have to deal with. An ISP there buys transit that covers both domestic and international and offers low cost connectivity direct to the major CDN's that are hosted in Australia.
Talkiet:ajobbins: What a shame. NZ will continue to be held to ransom for international bandwidth by Southern Cross Cable.
The threat of Pac Fibre along helped to bring some of their prices down, however with the threat now gone we are unlikely to see further reductions, and may even see increases over time.
This is not good news for New Zealand
Disclaimer - I work for Telecom.
However, I challenge you to back up your statement with facts. The reason for this is that it's my understanding that Southern Cross has a history of dropping prices regularly, even before Pacific Fibre was a gllint in anyone's eye...
?With lower marginal capacity cost we have reduced our prices to the US from both New Zealand and Australia by 44%?, says Pfeffer, ?the third largest decline in our history. Often coinciding with capacity upgrades, price declines are not new for Southern Cross, having averaged over 21 per cent annually since 2001. This longstanding practice has promoted the increasing use of retail internet data with reducing cost?.? (Quote from their site)
Cheers - N
hellonearthisman:
In the offical story post the line "In September 2011, the Australian telecommunication research company Market Clarity reported the cost of bandwidth to the U.S. from New Zealand as 5.8 times greater than the price paid by Australians. " Shows that we in NZ are paying 580% more that the same users in Australia.
The Monopoly is creaming us Kiwis
It's also sad about the new cable plan being cut, Vodafone must be happy as the just score the T/C fibre deals and the Pacific Fibre would have no longer been needed by them.
Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.
|
![]() ![]() ![]() |