Yes those options still exist, no they do not even come close to the bandwith or the pricing available on submarine cable systems.
Pricing on Southern Cross cable dropped massively a few years back when PIPE's PPC-1 went from Sydney to Guam. Ending the cosy duopoly between AJC1 and SSC. It was also one of the first cables out of Australia that wasn't owned partly by an incumbent telco (Telstra, Optus etc).
It seems like a smart idea for another player step in and maybe build another NZ-AUS only cable.
I must admit, the pacific was seemed hugely ambitious and I was wondering if something would come in and derail it. I never thought that espionage reasons would be one.
As far as I know, bandwidth isn't the limiting factor in satellite communication, but latency is. The distance to geostationary orbit means that a round trip for a packet would take at least 500ms before factoring in networking delays etc.
In the 90's, I heard that ihug internet used to get their bandwidth via a satellite to the USA.
Do options like this still exist? Would they even be feasible for todays bandwidth requirements?
It would be interesting to know what kind of options exist that could provide some much needed competition against the Southern Cross cable