Vodafone officials have confirmed that their proposed high-speed fibre cable will bypass Raglan. At a meeting hosted by the Raglan Coastal Reserves Advisory committee on Monday 14th, they announced plans for a three metre deep trench across Ngarunui Beach followed by mole ploughing a cable in the Wainui Reserve. They also plan to construct a new building at 331A Wainui Rd to house terminal equipment for the new cable. The new trans Tasman cable proposed by Vodafone will hook up to their 2001 Aqualink ( http://atlantic-cable.com/Cables/CableTimeLine/index2001.htm) infrastructure. Vodafone intends to apply for resource consents for this work from August to October. A copy of Vodafone’s proposed Tasman project can be downloaded here.
Vodafone recorded the few people at the meeting as: Johnny Cole (RAG FM), Linda Cole (Cultural/Events, RAG Club, Plunket, Community Board, RCR), Nigel Anderson (Community Member), Noel Barber (WDC), Angeline Greensill (Tainui Hapū), Shayne Gold (Reserves), Sheryl Kerr (Friends of Wainui), John Lawson (WED), Tony Moore, Bob Macleod, Chris Thompson (Raglan Resident and Ratepayers), Debbie Phillips-Morgan (Raglan Surf Life Saving Club), Anne Snowden (Raglan Surf Life Saving Club), Tui Kaa (Poihakena Marae).
Vodafone seem to have missed Councillor Clint Baddeley and not be aware that Linda Cole is Chair of the Raglan Community Board.
Following the meeting a Vodafone official said that directional driling would be used to install the cable in the Wainui Reserve, “I would like to apologise for describing the works in Wainui Reserve utilising ‘mole ploughing’ when in fact directional drilling will be employed to lay the new ducting! I have been travelling frequently and the mix up was due to a very tired brain! Aroha mai!” Directional drilling is a less invasive technique involving a series of holes to be dug with a hole drilled underground between the holes. The cable is then pulled into the drilled hole.
Questions put to the Vodafone officials by Community Board member Bob MacLeod and Councillor Clint Baddeley revealed that no improvements to Raglan’s telecomms will result from the work as the new cable will bypass Raglan. So there will be no faster internet for Raglan. Since the meeting Vodafone have confirmed that most of Raglan only has old style low-speed ADSL copper broadband and a small area has ADSL2+copper broadband. Vodafone does say they are working on getting 4G mobile service to Raglan before Christmas 2014. The Vodafone officials did say they will provide a phone and power link for the Raglan Surf Life Saving Club.
Following the meeting William Lee, Vodafone Network Architecture Manager provided this information about the new cable:
“Tasman Global Access (TGA) is a proposed new undersea cable linking New Zealand and Australia which will land at Raglan connecting International Telecommunication Traffic nodes in Auckland and Sydney. An existing Vodafone high capacity transmission cable which already lands at Raglan will be diverted a few hundred meters to the New Landing Station to provide the secure transmission backhaul connection between the TGA cable station and the Auckland International sites for onward distribution.
“The existing backhaul transmission cable is used to transport telecommunications traffic between the main centres in the North Island. It is not designed nor is it suitable for connecting to individual customers or communities – it is designed to provide point to point high speed /high capacity intercity trunk connections. For TGA, all connections will be at 100 Gbps or above.
“For Fibre distribution systems suitable for connection to people’s homes you need a highly distributed cable network- which typically looks like a tree and branch topology (like our Roading System) with distribution trunks feeding fibre access cables, which are in turn connected to people’s homes. Neither TGA or the existing Vodafone backhaul cable are suitable to support such a topology. For more information on access fibre systems information can be found on the Crown Fibre Websites or the Website of the Local Fibre Companies such as Chorus and UFF who are building such networks.”
Linda Cole, Chairperson of the Raglan Community Board, said she is able to provide hard copies of the documents on request.