Plans unveiled for Tasman Ring subsea cable
Ultrafrast broadband network operator Chorus is teaming up with Datagrid New Zealand on a 6,000-kilometre subsea cable that will “supercharge” trans-Tasman data connectivity, according to the companies.
The new builds on previously announced plans from Datagrid New Zealand to build a cable to connect Southland to Australia, with one of the aims being to build a high-capacity link to connect Datagrid’s planned Makarewa AI training data centre park, which will have a capacity of up to 240MW (megawatts) and be powered by renewable energy.
Datagrid is backed by Hawaiki subsea cable founder Remi Galasso. But a new addition to the plan sees New Plymouth and Greymouth connected alongside Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne, and Invercargill creating one big fibre ring spanning the entire Tasman. The caveat is that the fibre ring will be constructed “if sufficient demand is established”.
The proposed route of the new Tasman Ring Network. Construction subject to sufficient demand.
The Tasman Ring design, according to Datagrid and Chorus, will offer data capacity of up to 540Tbps (terabytes per second).
“We believe the Tasman Ring is the right vision and the right design to make New Zealand an attractive location for hyperscale data centres looking for abundant renewable electricity sources,” says Datagrid’s chief executive officer, Perrine Dhalluin.
She said the network would move New Zealand from the “gigabyte to the terabyte” era.
For Chorus, which has extensive fibre assets throughout the length of the country, the Tasman Ring would be an opportunity to integrate international and domestic connectivity.
“The Tasman Ring would hugely improve data centre connectivity in New Zealand and across the Tasman,” says Mike Shirley, Chorus' executive general manager of infrastructure.
“Trans-Tasman connectivity is a natural adjacency to Chorus. The Tasman Ring project would allow New Zealand to compete in the international hashtag#AI market and harness the global acceleration of hashtag#cloud adoption,” he added.
Datagrid announced in June that it had contracted EGS Survey, a surveying company to carry out a “cable route desktop study” to map the path for its proposed 2,700km Te Waipounamu submarine cable connecting Invercargill to Sydney and Melbourne trans-Tasman cable.
The Tasman Ring is therefore a major upgrade in ambition and technical scope. Chorus earlier this week informed investors that it had signed an exclusive memorandum of understanding with Datagrid to “investigate the potential for a Trans-Tasman Ring”.
It’s unclear as to whether Chorus has committed any funding to the project at this stage. AI and hyperscale data centre development has driven demand for new subsea cables, with several major announcements of cable investments coming this year.
Earlier this week, Meta said that it would spend US$10 billion investing in a 40,000km cable network stretching from the east coast of the United States, to Africa and India and then on to the west coast of the United States via Australia. It would give Facebook and Instagram owner Meta true global connectivity for its data centres, which are increasingly being used for AI applications.
In October, Australian telecoms provider Vocus said it had been selected by Google as its preferred partner to deliver a subsea cable connecting Australia to the United States, with landings in Fiji and French Polynesia.
