Southern Cross Cable

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The route of the cables, the red are Submarine, The blue are Terrestrial.

The Southern Cross Cable, operated by a company named Southern Cross Cables Limited, is a trans-Pacific network of telecommunications cables commissioned in 2000.

The network has 28,900 km of submarine and 1,600 km of terrestrial fibre optic cables, operated in a triple-ring configuration. Each cable has a bandwidth capacity of 240 gigabit/s^[1].

1 Landing points
2 Network segments
- 2.1 Submarine
- 2.2 Terrestrial
3 Topology
4 Damage in late 2007
5 Construction and ownership
6 References
7 See also
8 External links

[edit] Landing points

Alexandria, NSW, Australia
Brookvale, NSW, Australia
Suva, Fiji
Whenuapai, New Zealand
Takapuna, New Zealand
Kahe Point, Hawaii, USA
Spencer Beach, Hawaii, USA
Hillsboro, Oregon, USA
San Jose, California, USA (Terrestrial Connection only)
Morro Bay, California, USA

[edit] Network segments

The network comprises 12 segments (length of segment in brackets):

[edit] Submarine

A. Alexandria-Whenuapai (2280 km)
C. Takapuna-Spencer Beach (8000 km)
D. Spencer Beach-Morro Bay (4135 km)
F. Kahe Point-Hillsboro, Oregon (4540 km)
G1. Suva-Kahe Point (5830 km)
G2. Brookvale-Suva (3540 km)
I. Spencer Beach-Kahe Point (460 km)

[edit] Terrestrial

B. Whenuapai-Takapuna (15 km)
E. Hillsboro, Oregon-Morro Bay (1590 km)
- E1. Morro Bay-San Jose (350 km)
- E2. San Jose-Hillsboro, Oregon (1600 km)
H. Alexandria-Brookvale (30 km)

Diagram of cross section of the cable

[edit] Topology

The network topology is configured to have redundant paths and be self-healing in case of physical damage.

In the cross section diagram shown:

Insulating high density polyethylene (17 mm)
Copper tubing (8.3 mm)
Steel wires
Optical fibers in water resistant jelly (2.3 mm)

[edit] Damage in late 2007

Southern Cross Cable's operations vice president, Dean Veverka, confirmed that hurricane strength storms and flooding have wiped out the carrier's Oregon cable route and halved its bandwidth between Australia/New Zealand/Fiji and the US. A Southern Cross customer (iiNet) has said that emergency works have been organised to perform a more permanent fix for the damage to the cable. These works will be performed on 3rd February 2008 at 12 midnight AEST^[2].

[edit] Construction and ownership

Construction of the cable began in July 1999, and was in use by customers by November 2000. Additional works and upgrades have since taken place to increase the network's capacity to 480 Gbit/s. In August 2007, SC Cables announced it had contracted with Alcatel-Lucent to upgrade the cable to 660 Gbit/s by the end of the first quarter 2008 and to 860 Gbit/s by the end of 2008, with future upgrades possible to 2.4 Tbit/s ^[3].

The company is owned by Telecom New Zealand (50%), SingTel (40%) and Verizon Business (10%).