To: Gnarly who wrote (29506 ) 1/6/1998 11:22:00 PM From: Glenn D. Rudolph Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 61433
Australia's Optus still keen on A$1 bln cablelink Reuters Story - January 06, 1998 22:58 %AU %TEL %NZ %ID %CN %GB TLSX TELZ WCOM V%REUTER P%RTR MELBOURNE, Jan 7 (Reuters) - Optus Communications Pty Ltd said on Wednesday it was confident a A$1 bln trans-Pacific optic fibre cable project would proceed despite the non-involvement of Australia's main carrier Telstra Corp . The Southern Cross Cable Network project jointly proposed by Optus, Telecom Corp of New Zealand and WorldCom Inc would link Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii to the U.S. west coast. "The project looks very promising but we cannot say for sure it's going ahead until we get the appropriate board approval, but we are pretty confident," an Optus spokeswoman said. The spokeswoman said there had been plenty of interest in the project from telecommunication groups from around the world and Telstra's involvement was not a requirement. "We certainly asked Telstra to be involved but if they are not involved it won't really impact on the project," she said. The cable would provide 40 gigabits of capacity which is needed to cater for the forecast growth of traffic generated by new internet, data and other services. In December last year, Telstra announced it was planning to lay a fibre optic cable to New Zealand called Tasman 3 which would have a capacity of 40 gigabits. "That is the plan at this stage but the Tasman 3 link still needs to be approved by the board," a Telstra spokesman said. Telstra also needs to lift its capacity to the United States but a spokesman for the company said its most cost effective solution is a route through Indonesia and China. Telstra is one of fourteen partners in the US$950 million China-US Cable Network project which is expected to be completed by December 1999. Telstra's spokesman said the link to China would be made through the recently completed Jasaurus cable to Indonesia which it built in conjunction with Optus and Indonesia's PT Indosat and then through the SEA-ME-WE3 cable which is due to be completed later this year. - Michael Stapleton 61-3 9286-1435 email: melbourne.newsroomreuters.com