Cheaper internet in the pipeline

Sometime soon a drilling rig will arrive at a park in the Sydney northern beaches suburb of Cromer and drill noisily for about three weeks – going about 70 metres straight down and then out towards Collaroy beach.

The sound of that drill motor disturbing the Cromer peace will signal the start of one of the most important and interesting internet projects Australia has ever seen: the first fully independent undersea cable.

This week, the listed Brisbane-based company Pipe Networks applied for cable landing licences in both Australia and Guam, and a commercial operators' licence from the US Federal Communication Commission.

Pipe Networks is spending $200 million to lay optic cable from Sydney to Guam, which will finally break the data duopoly into Australia held by the Australia-Japan Cable and Southern Cross Cables.

It's that duopoly, not Telstra, that is primarily responsible for Australia's high internet prices and data caps, although Telstra is part of both consortiums and is now building its own duopoly-busting cable to Hawaii.

But the new Cromer to Guam cable being built by the little Brisbane company founded six years ago by Bevan Slattery and Steve Baxter will be the first and only independent one: it is likely to transform the Australian internet, dramatically bringing down prices and increasing capacity.

Find IT News and the rest of this article online at Business Spectator http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Cheaper-internet-in-the-pipeline-C85R9?OpenDocument

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