Someone has to pay for it and we are in a recession.
Still I'm sure when the good times come back investment will be available.
Pacific Fibre, a company formed to build a submarine cable linking the USA, New Zealand and Australia, has called it a day after failing to find the funds it needed to build the project. “We believed funding for these long term infrastructure investments would have been more readily available and were confident the business …
Not surprised really especially in a recession - Sydney to LA is 6507.9 Nautical Miles - that's a hell of a lot of fibre cable. Australia to NZ would be 1154.6 Nautical Miles which is still a lot. In ATM OC48c Long Reach fibre, 9µm Single Mode the distance is 49.70 miles max. Without land mass in between (which engineers can get to easily) its always going to be expensive.
Would be fun to do though and an interesting challenge
It's not really a technology challenge, they put repeaters in every 10 miles or so.
http://www.mitsubishielectric.com/bu/communication/transmission/submarine/products/wetplant.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable#Optical_telephone_cables
The big cost is actually the ships, which cost something like a $100k/day to lease...