Fibre network infrastructure builder Chorus is plotting a new subsea data cable, along with data centre operator Datagrid, which is based in Makarewa, north of Invercargill, in Southland. It's been named the Tasman Ring Network. The cable system would span Invercargill, Melbourne-Sydney, Auckland and interestingly enough, have a branch to New Plymouth and Greymouth, along with a terrestrial network on both islands.
That's some 6000 kilometres of cabling, and 540 terabits per second of projected design capacity for data transfers.
Whether or not the Tasman Ring Network system is built isn't clear; the project is at the memorandum of understanding stage, with Chorus and Datagrid investigating the feasibility of the cable which now doubt involves looking hard for funding. The demand for fast data connectivity seems to be holding up though, thanks to cloud computing and artificial intelligence, and having more network diversity is probably not a silly idea.
On top of the TRN cable proposal, Chorus investor day recently had some interesting developments. The network infrastructure builder is working to become a "a simplified all fibre business with 80 per cent uptake by 2030".
As part of that, under new chief executive Mark Aue, Chorus intends to recycle around 4000 kilometres of large copper cabling over the next three to seven years. Last time I talked copper network closure with Chorus, the plan was to leave the metallic cables where they were.
Now, Chorus estimates the net proceeds of recycling the copper cables could amount to $30 million to $50 million, which is not to be spat at. There's also a sale of "non-core high sites", with a $20 million net book value coming up, and "post-copper optionality for other land and buildings" outside of Ultrafast Broadband (UFB) areas. That collection of assets has a net book value of $75 million.
Not having to maintain the copper network, which is due to be retired by 2030, will cut Chorus operating expenditure by around $50 million a year.
Chorus is also looking kickstarting the Neura brand, aimed at asset management for Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as sensors. Neura is focused on the International Telecommunications Union's Y.4480 long range wide area network (LoRaWAN) protocol, for low power IoT devices, connecting them with sub-gigahertz radio signals.
Edge computing, which in the Chorus context involves repurposing the old Telecom-era copper phone exchanges as compact data centres, was also mentioned at the investor day. Fibre doesn't take up anywhere near the space of copper, so all of a sudden there's room to do other things in the exchanges like installing server racks for co-location.
Chorus said it is developing an alternative revenue model to scale EdgeCentres, which is its name for the facilities. This would be interesting to hear more about; while the EdgeCentres bring compute and content closer to customers over fast fibre connections, do they make sense commercially and in terms of scalability?
Finally, there's rural fibre network expansion on the cards as well, through the government's Te Waihanga-administered Infrastructure Priorities Programme that is currently open for applications for proposal, until December 20 this year. For rural and remote regions starved of decent connectivity, this is something worth keeping an eye on.
3 Comments
While expansion of services might be useful I hope that chorus doesn’t take its eye off maintaining its infrastructure like the other utilities (water, power) did.
And if they propose any more price increases or do dividend returns to shareholders, that would be unfortunate. They should make a pretty penny selling the copper as well.
To often I’ve seen utilities waste these windfalls.
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