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Fibre optic port - Source: ONE News / CNN -
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The IT industry sees huge gains for the New Zealand economy if a proposed second international broadband cable goes ahead.
Pacific Fibre, which involves businessmen Sam Morgan, Stephen Tindall and Rod Drury, last week announced plans for another undersea fibre optic cable, connecting Australia, New Zealand and the US.
The initial proposal is for a 13,000 kilometre long high speed cable which will deliver five times the capacity of the existing Southern Cross system, which is partly owned by Telecom.
Bill O'Reilly from NZICT group says a new cable would open up massive opportunities for IT firms.
"We see opportunities in areas like photonics, optics, high-performance computing, power management. If we can be part of the team that cracks this, (it) will generate intellectual property that New Zealand businesses can capitalise on for the rest of the 21st century."
O'Reilly says the cable could also see New Zealand become an international data hub.
"One of the key ingredients these days for data centre locations is power and obviously companies are looking for green power and New Zealand is right up there with renewables.
"I know for a fact having spoken to some of the world's leading data centre operators that they would consider New Zealand as a location because of power. But today that's constrained because we only have Southern Cross as the only high capacity system."
He says it could also boost New Zealand's chances of being part of a major international telescope project, known as the Square Kilometre Array.
"It networks 3,000 satellite dishes stretched between Western Australia and New Zealand into a square kilometre aperture into space and this is going to look back in time to see the origin of the universe."
"In IT terms this is one of the largest projects that we are going to see in the 21st century."
