A cut in capacity price announced by Southern Cross may reduce Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy’s desire to build a government-funded submarine cable, ZDNet reports.

Southern Cross plans to reduce prices by 20% with the installation of 100Gbps equipment this year on the subsea cable between Australia, New Zealand and the USA.

When completed the upgrade could see the cable get up to 7Tbps, said the sales and marketing director Ross Pfeffer.

Conroy was quoted as saying: “I’ve often said that if the international market doesn’t improve…I’ll build a new pipe to the US to drive prices down if they don’t start responding to market pressure.”

Subsea World News Staff , January 14, 2013