A submarine cable project linking Australia and New Zealand to Hawaii and mainland United States that will improve broadband services in our region is on schedule.
At 42 Tbps (terabits per second), the carrier-neutral Hawaiki cable system will be the highest cross-sectional capacity link between the nations, and will see the dawn of a "new era of international connectivity benefiting businesses and consumers across the Pacific region" says the project developer.
Earlier this month HawaikiCable reported more than 13,000 km of cable of the 14,000 kilometres needed for the project has been manufactured, as well as 150 repeaters. Installation permits for Australia, New Zealand and Oregon (USA) have been secured, and Hawaii is progressing as expected.
Horizontal directional drilling for the cable landing in Pacific City, Oregon had started, and construction of the land duct route in Sydney is progressing; with more than half the conduits installed
The first cable load (7,000 km) will begin next month.
HawaikiCable said it is on schedule for the project to be delivered in the middle of next year. The cable has a design life of 25 years, so until 2043.
The system was developed by Sir Eion Edgar, Malcolm Dick and Remi Galasso; entrepreneurs all based in New Zealand.
“Once live, this cable system will help eliminate the distance between all Pacific communities and provide an economic boost to a region consistently starved for broadband access," said Remi Galasso, CEO of Hawaiki.
The company says the project will reduce the cost of connectivity for consumers and businesses across the Pacific region and introduce true competition in New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific Islands.
Among the company's customers will be Amazon Web Services (AWS), which has purchased capacity to speed performance and reduce latency for cloud customers operating between Australia/New Zealand and the USA.
Other submarine cable projects in progress we've mentioned include the Tasman Global Access (TGA) undersea cable (operational in 2018) and the Australia Singapore Cable (ASC) (40 Tbps).
To give you a bit of an idea of the capabilities of the Hawaiki cable; it will have capacity fast enough to stream 8.4 million HD movies at the same time, with bandwidth left to spare.
