Hawaiki cable lets discuss it

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seretonin

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#231883 18-Mar-2018 18:28

Not sure if this has been posted here , but just wondering how it will be implemented in NZ

http://hawaikicable.co.nz/?home

i have very rudimentary knowledge on how these services work , once the cable is up and running , will all ISP's be using it ? or will there be certain agreements for certain ISP to use it ? is the term called peering ? will spark use the existing southern cross cable since they have shares in it ?

what will change in the NZ broadband market ? will prices come down ? will download rates improve? Will Australia saturate the bandwidth ?

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#1979426 18-Mar-2018 18:33

I doubt all ISP's will using it considering Spark as I understand own quite a bit of the Southern X cable and the new cable between Raglan and Sydney that went live in 2017

I think the new cable is a waste of $$$ actually most NZ traffic comes from OZ CDN or delivered via a CDN in NZ

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#1979428 18-Mar-2018 18:36

FYI VodafoneNZ , Spark and Telstra AU own the new cable between Raglan and Sydney that is already live taking traffic

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sbiddle

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#1979429 18-Mar-2018 18:38

There isn't really much to discuss.

It won't change pricing which is already too cheap, won't improve download speeds because there is nothing wrong with these now. You won't notice any changes other than some RSP's may choose to buy upstream capacity to the US from them in addition to SXC. As the % of total Internet traffic heading to the US is not increasing (it's declining significantly for some RSP's) it will mean very little.

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#1979431 18-Mar-2018 18:40

Latency won't change and as above pricing won't change as right now it's a race to the bottom of the cliff with retail ISP's

A cable landing into the South island would be a good idea instead of them all landing in the North

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BarTender

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#1979435 18-Mar-2018 18:58

The real winners in this is REANZ as they are one of the cornerstone tenants. So universities and government research agencies will have a whole lot more bandwidth to play with.

As John and Steve have already said it will mean very little if anything for most retail ISPs. I doubt Spark / Vodafone / 2Degrees (SNAP) would sign up any time soon as they would already have long term agreements with Spark Wholesale who run connections over SCCN & TGA via and since Spark owns half of SCCN and spark & Vodafone have an investment in TGA it would be strange if they signed up.

The other thing is SCCN has a redundant ring so offers diversity should there be a cable cut. However Hawaiki is a single cable so if it gets cuts then any ISPs who signed up to exclusive connections then they would be dead in the water until the cable was fixed. In the cases of SEA-ME-WE 3 the interruptions have lasted weeks. So for that reason alone most if not all ISPs would still want an agreement with Spark Wholesale to get resilience via TGA or SCCN.

and

acjh58

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#1979861 19-Mar-2018 13:49

In other countries capacity wholesalers (who sell to the smaller ISPs) tend to spread their traffic across available links. As mentioned above, REANZ needs the very high speed, low error rate capacity to the US for research purposes (they won't use standard TCP/IP so can really fill a wavelength). That's why the Govt put $15m into the project.

Typically, the volume of international internet traffic crossing the Pacific is tiny in comparison to (say) Trans Atlantic, so cable providers do charge more to get a return on their assets. The TGA cable is not really a typical international cable as it is mainly sucking content out of Sydney to fill caches over here. That's not typical business type internet use which might (for instance) require video conferencing with various sites around the world.

Alan

DonGould

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#1979893 19-Mar-2018 14:49

Ok I'll bite...

First up, this cable system is connecting in a whole pile of islands in the pacific, so it's a fantastic bit of work!

Have you ever sent ya mum an email? ...ya I know, stupid question ea, because of course yous have... all yous who live in Auckland and come from da islands... oh, hold on... perhaps not such a silly question.

Have you ever flow up to the islands and felt disconnected from the world? I have, well actually I went on a boat.

This cable isn't about giving you more megs at your homes, like the folks have already said, it's also not about a race to the bottom. It's about connecting people who aren't already connected well. It's about connecting locations that aren't connected well so that when you decide to go visit you can take your phone and it just 'works' and uses your "local data".

It also came with a bonus for all the big guys too. Just because Spark and Vodafone own TGA and Spark owns a big chunk of SCX won't mean that they don't buy some capacity on this new cable, they will. Apart from the fact that they want connectivity into those new locations too, their retail guys also want to keep pressure on internal billing and not have SCX just run away with the profits.

SCX breaks too, even with the protected ring stuff happens some times and things go pear shape, and anyone really good in this space knows that having your bases loaded with peering and hand overs adds protection.

I also believe there's business that's going to want to support providers who support this project... you know the joke, it's been around for years "where's the capital of Samoa?.... ya bro, South Auckland"... we all know it's funny because there is a massive island community in New Zealand today, but the serious side is that those people still have connection to that part of the world where the new cable goes.

From a national stand point, these sorts of projects drive opportunity. In 1987 when I left school the only shop in town was Telecom. In 1997 the only shop for an international internet cable was ... ya.... Telecom.... Today you have employment choice, and that gives you all sorts of personal security too.

Remember how the only way to get a pay rise was wait till the union got a rise through or you just served your time and got the next job up the ladder? Today you can leave one company and take up a better role with more money at another company or you can choose to just sit. Choice is really important for freedom. It doesn't mean you have to choose, but if you can't choose then you're not actually free.

Promote New Zealand - Get yourself a .kiwi.nz domain name!!!

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acjh58

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#1980120 19-Mar-2018 20:19

It was going to connect a lot of Pacific Islands, but not many in the final design. It's stopping at American Samoa, and Samoa will probably get a link from there when the diverted Pacrim cable finally dies. Other places may have gone for O3B instead.

Alan

Pumpedd

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#1980149 19-Mar-2018 21:17

It will effect price to a certain degree as that what competition does. Above all it provides NZ with extra redundancy. The Southern Cross cable system is getting quite old now.

DonGould

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#1981050 21-Mar-2018 15:35

Pumpedd:

The Southern Cross cable system is getting quite old now.

I can't imagine that it won't get section replacements though. SCX has proven to be a very robust business, so I think it's shareholders are likely to keep it alive well into the future.

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yitz

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#1981296 22-Mar-2018 00:53

Does anyone know if the current fibre cut outage in Sydney is related in any way to the Southern Cross cable system? Clearly not the undersea segment but provision of paths from the CBD datacentres/IXPs to the landing stations.

Even with multiple cable systems it seems we will still have issues with ISPs running single unprotected 100 Gb/s circuits. It does however place emphasis on the importance of this path and highlight the vast volume of traffic going over it.

Just curious as I have not heard of reports of Australian ISPs being affected domestically or internationally.

hio77

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#1981319 22-Mar-2018 08:36

yitz: Does anyone know if the current fibre cut outage in Sydney is related in any way to the Southern Cross cable system? Clearly not the undersea segment but provision of paths from the CBD datacentres/IXPs to the landing stations. Even with multiple cable systems it seems we will still have issues with ISPs running single unprotected 100 Gb/s circuits. It does however place emphasis on the importance of this path and highlight the vast volume of traffic going over it. Just curious as I have not heard of reports of Australian ISPs being affected domestically or internationally.

yes the cut did affect a scx path.

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