Telecommunications companies Spark, Vodafone and Telstra have jointly invested USD $70 million to build the undersea Tasman Global Access (TGA) cable, connecting New Zealand to Australia.

Over the past 10 months more than 2,300km of cable has been painstaking laid between the two countries. And although there is still some testing underway, the project team expects to “switch on’ the cable for the first time in April 2017.

The future benefits of the TGA cable include strengthened links into fast-growing Asian markets, important redundancy and resiliency, and better connection with the five main international cable systems currently serving Australia.

This is an exciting example of industry collaboration, that aims to meet the future international bandwidth requirements for New Zealand consumers and businesses alike - which are set to grow by 11,000% in the next 10 years.

Wellington-based international production company, Pukeko Pictures, is an example of one local company set to benefit from the TGA cable. For more on their story, click on the video above.