New subsea cables feed a data-hungry, paranoid world

Rémi Galasso plans to construct another cable between NZ and Australia (Image: Getty)

Thu, 25 Jan 2024

Earlier this week, I watched a gun-metal-coloured vessel motor up Wellington Harbour and assumed the navy was coming to town.But looking at it through my binoculars, I saw the words “cable patrol” painted across it in large black letters. Transpower runs the patrol boat and spends most of its time monitoring the Cable Protection Zone between Marlborough and Wellington, a 7 km wide stretch of water through which critical power and communications cables run between our two main islands.The consequences of a cable being severed by a sh...

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