Hawaiki submarine cable ready to be installed
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Hawaiki submarine cable ready to be installed

Installation of the 14,000km Hawaiki Australia-New Zealand-US cable system will begin early next month.

The subsea cable was co-developed by New Zealand-based entrepreneurs Eion Edgar, Malcolm Dick and Remi Galasso, and once live will connect Australia, New Zealand and the US. 

The cable itself was manufactured at TE SubCom’s Newington, New Hampshire facility and contains more than 170 completed repeaters. It will be the highest cross-sectional capacity link between the US and Australia and New Zealand, with a design capacity of 42Tbps. The carrier-neutral cable will offer 135ms latency over the full route from Sydney to Hillsboro, on the coast of Oregon, US.

Remi Galasso, CEO of Hawaiki, said: “The coming months will see the realisation of our vision for Hawaiki, a system that will impact the capabilities and economies of hundreds of Pacific communities. Considering the scope of the project, the progress to date has been staggering. It is a thrill to reach the installation phase and know that we will soon be ready to light the system and deliver much needed capacity to the region.”

The cable has already been loaded onto the cable ships Global Sentinel and Responder. All installation permits for Australia, New Zealand and Oregon have already been received, and are progressing well in Hawaii. In both Sydney and New Zealand construction of land duct routes are complete, while installation of terminal equipment, the pulling of the land cable and construction of a new cable station is either underway to due to begin shortly.

Debra Brask, vice president of project and programme management at TE SubCom, said: “With the cable load process concluding on schedule, we will soon launch the installation phase of the project using two of the industry’s most technologically-advanced cable laying vessels. Hawaiki is certainly a large and multi-faceted system, but we are confident in our transpacific expertise and look forward to an efficient deployment.”

Back in July, the Hawaiki subsea cable project signed a contract with local construction company McKay, to build its landing station in New Zealand. Under the agreement, McKay is responsible for the civil, building, electrical, standby generation, AC and DC UPS systems, and HVAC systems to provide the required cable landing facility for Hawaiki.

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