In a Tuesday statement, Telecom New Zealand (TNZ) said that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with Vodafone New Zealand and Australia's Telstra, for building a $US60 million trans-Tasman submarine cable which would link New Zealand with Australia and would strengthen the country's Internet connectivity with Asia.

Revealing that the move to build the submarine cable - the Tasman Global Access Cable - is chiefly aimed at easing the pressure on the limited, crowded links between New Zealand and Australia, TNZ said that nearly 40 percent of its traffic is between the two countries.

With the Tasman Global Access Cable being the third cable between Australia and New Zealand, the three venture partners - TNZ, Vodafone and Telstra - said that the cable will likely be completed by the end of 2014; and will give a notable boost, to the extent of 300 times, to NZ's data transfer capacity.

The Tasman Global Access Cable venture would be an approximately equal partnership among the three companies; and the contract for constructing the network, which is expected to have a `30 terabits per second' capacity, would soon be put up for tender.

In a statement about the Tasman Global Access Cable, Martijn Blanken - the Global Managing Director at Telstra - said in a statement: "This cable will enable New Zealand to better leverage Australia's much stronger Internet connectivity."