Labour alleges failure of Southern Cross Cable

“Labour has learnt that a ‘catastrophic failure’ at Southern Cross’s Alexandria landing station occurred this morning due to an unauthorised and un-notified software change to their wavelength switching platform, which blew up,” she said in a media statement

“We understand that partial service has been restored by reinstating old circuits via New Zealand. Full restoration is still being worked on.”

Curran has susquently posted the source of her information online. It shows two email conversations about the outage, which one correspondent describes as "a catastrophic failure at the Alexandria landing station this morning." The company named as being affected is Vocus.

Meanwhile Southern Cross Cable issued a statement about the outage.

"Contrary to a misleading and inaccurate media release from Labour’s Clare Curran, no ‘catastrophic failure’ has occurred on the Southern Cross Cable.

"The cable is, a figure of 8 network providing internet services to New Zealand, Australia, Pacific and the US.

"In the early hours of this morning a limited outage affecting 10 percent of our active capacity occurred during our maintenance window which is a low traffic impacting period.

"The outage occurred at one of our Sydney cable stations, Alexandria, and it lasted from 3.17am – 4.28am, Sydney Time, impacting four of our customers.

"A problem occurred and the switch was reverted to its original software. The incident occurred as a part of authorised work taking place to expand capacity on the Southern Cross network."

The Cable


(Map of Southern Cross submarine cable from Telegeography)

The Southern Cross Cable landing points:

Alexandria, Australia
Brookvale, Australia
Hillsboro, Oregon, United States
Kahe Point, Hawaii, United States
Morro Bay, California, United States
Spencer Beach, Hawaii, United States
Suva, Fiji
Takapuna, New Zealand
Whenuapai, New Zealand