The landing station forms part of 14,000km submarine system that will link Australia to New Zealand and then onto the US, as well as Hawaii and American Samoa, with options to expand to additional South Pacific islands. It will offer 43 Tbps of capacity and will be the fastest and largest link between the US and Australia and New Zealand.
The Modular Cable Landing Station (MCLS) facility being provided for the Hawaiki Submarine Cable consists of ten modules, complete with critical services, which includes: cooling, ventilation, fire alarm and suppression, AC backup power, lightning protection, DC plant, UPS, cable management, access control, video surveillance and building management system.
The XSite Modular design team is based in New Jersey, while fabrication is underway at a dedicated modular facility in the United States. Once completed, the ten modules containing top-line, high-value equipment will be shipped to Oahu, Hawaii, where it will be set and the on-site assembly completed, with final testing performed
As for the progress of the cable itself, in October the cable had landed in Pacific City, Oregon, the following month TE SubCom’s Responder cable-laying ship arrived in Sydney harbour in Australia. The cable is scheduled for completion and ready for service in June 2018.
Xsite Modular’s CEO Amy Marks, was recently at the inaugural Subsea Connect Americas conference in Florida. While there she sat on a panel discussing the perceived end of the cable landing station and trend of cable connected directly into the data centre. During the panel Marks said: "If you look at the cost of the cable station compared to the cost of the cable itself, it is like a decimal point. I can’t understand why people spend all this money on these cable systems and then put it in someone’s supermarket basement, instead of actually providing a cable landing station to protect the data of people on this planet. It is a pimple on the butt of the cost of these systems."
To read the full feature as part of the Dec/Jan issue of Capacity magazine, please click here.