GOLD Coast City Council wants to plug into the information super highway."

The council’s Economic Development and Tourism Committee is studying the feasibility of establishing an offshore fibre-optic link.

The council wants to link to the existing submarine optical fibre cable between Sydney and Guam, located 160 kilometres off Burleigh Heads.

Committee chair Councillor Susie Douglas said there were provisions made for further connections added to the Gold Coast when the cable was laid in 2009.

“This would allow us to bypass the existing underground fibre-optic link to Sydney, which would reduce the cost of global data transmission for businesses, improve communication reliability and efficiency and strengthen our appeal as a major national and international IT and data hub,” Cr Douglas said.

“It is possible that we could link up to that cable for a fraction of the cost of establishing a whole new cable and council would be seeking funding support from other levels of government."

But Australian Communications and Media Authority manager telecommunications licensing, numbering and submarine cables manager Robert Johnston said it would be difficult and expensive to splice into an existing cable.

“Commercially, someone would want a cable if they had a customer that required massive data transfer capabilities,” Mr Johnston said.

“Laying cable is very expensive and there are only a handful of companies globally with the capacity to lay the cable.

“Normally someone would already have a customer before considering doing it.”

National data providers bought space on the submarine cable with data coming into “landing stations” before being sent on the submarine cable.