You may have recently seen the French vessel, Ile De Sein, moored off Tamarama Beach as part of a project to lay 9000 kilometres of submarine cable between Sydney and Hawaii.

The new cable can be scaled up to 1.28 Terabits* per second capacity between the two countries. At full capacity of 1.28 Terabits per second the cable is capable of carrying 160,000 concurrent high definition television channels.

Facts

• Telstra owns 100 per cent of the new Sydney-Hawaii submarine cable, the largest ever built by an Australian company.
• At 9,120 km the Sydney-Hawaii cable will be the longest direct single span cable out of Australia.
• The cable can carry up to 1.28 Terabits of traffic per second from Sydney to Hawaii. A terabit is1000 gigabits.
• This is the first international cable to be laid out of Australia in seven years.
• The cable is only 17 mm in diameter.
• It will connect from Sydney to Hawaii where it will interconnect with other cables providing direct access to the mainland USA, including the Asia America Gateway cable.
• Around 65 per cent of all internet content accessed in Australia comes from the USA. The cable will allow increased data, voice and video transmission capability to the USA.
• This cable network will reduce Australia’s reliance on foreign-owned companies and is another example of Telstra keeping at the forefront of global trends.
• Businesses and consumers who use data-rich services such as telecommuting, video-conferencing and mobile video applications will have access to a more seamless and reliable service through this increased network capacity.
• The Sydney-Hawaii cable will be available to both Telstra retail and wholesale customers.
• The cable network has been laid out in accordance with specific environmental standards and the European Maritime Safety Agency inspection process.
• The Ile de Sein is laying the cable. This boat is designed to carry out cable maintenance, cable installation and other related offshore duties.
• IP traffic will double approximately every two years, meaning there will be greater and greater demand for capacity to carry this traffic. The Sydney-Hawaii cable will help meet this demand.**
• The first commercial cable in the world was built in August 1850 by Anglo-French Telegraph Company across the English Channel. It was simply a copper wire coated with gutta-percha, without any other protection.

Learn more:

• Mega ship leaves wave riders feeling swell (www.smh.com.au)

Media release:

• Telstra's new submarine cable lands in Sydney (www.telstra.com.au)