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Pacific Fibre cable to run without Pacnet

Pacific Fibre has announced it will be going it alone in funding the construction of a new US$400 million subsea cable between Australia, New Zealand and the United States after a deal with Asian telco Pacnet fell through.
Written by Josh Taylor, Contributor

Pacific Fibre has announced it will be going it alone in funding the construction of a new US$400 million subsea cable between Australia, New Zealand and the United States after a deal with Asian telco Pacnet fell through.

Pacific Fibre

The planned route (Credit: Pacific Fibre)

"A joint build Memorandum of Understanding expired earlier this year, freeing us to move ahead more quickly," Pacific Fibre CEO Mark Rushworth said in a statement. "Our proposed design greatly expands capacity for carriers and multinational businesses, and provides much needed diversity for the region."

In July last year, Pacnet announced it had signed the Memorandum of Understanding with the Pacific Fibre group made up of Kiwi businessmen, to be an equal partner in rolling out the pipe.

Pacnet CEO Bill Barney said at the time that the group would approach vendors in around September or October; however, Pacific Fibre just today announced it had released its Invitation to Tender to selected vendors for the build of the 5.12-terabit per second 13,000-kilometre capacity subsea cable.

Despite the delay for tender, and the loss of Pacnet from the project, Rushworth said everything was still on track.

"We have been assuming a solo-build system for several months now and remain firmly on track to finance and deliver the system in 2013," he said.

Barney was contacted by ZDNet Australia for clarification as to why Pacnet had pulled out of the Memorandum of Understanding, but no comment had been received at the time of writing.

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