Southern Cross Cable's near monopoly over international internet traffic appears to be dangling by a thread.
After years of failed ventures and dashed hopes, Hawaiki Cable chief executive Remi Galasso said his company was just a few weeks away from confirming it would build a competing US$300 million (NZ$350m) cable linking New Zealand and Australia to the United States.
The former Alcatel-Lucent executive said Hawaiki had secured a major New Zealand company to be its equity partner and an Australasian bank willing to provide debt financing.
All that remained was for Hawaiki to convert some "letters of intent" it already had from customers into firm contracts and "complete the bank process to unlock the funds".
"This is not a piece of cake. We are dealing with large organisations, but I am confident the finishing line is a few weeks away," Galasso said.
Hawaiki would then put into effect the contract it had with United States supplier TE SubCom to lay the the 13,127 kilometre-long cable, which should be ready by March 2016, he said. The cable would have a capacity of 6.4 terabits on four fibre-pairs, sufficient to carry a million HD movie streams simultaneously.
