Hawaiki Cable and subsea cable provider TE SubCom have launched a marine route survey for the planned cable linking Australia and New Zealand with Hawaii and the mainland US.
Construction of the 14,000km cable system is currently scheduled for completion in mid-2018. As well as the main route, the system will have options to expand to several South Pacific islands.
Once complete, the Hawaiki Cable will deliver more than 30Tbps of capacity, making it the highest cross-sectional capacity link between the US and Australia/New Zealand.
Hawaiki has already signed on AWS, Vodafone, REANZ and American Samoa Telecom as anchor customers for the new carrier-neutral cable system.
“Each stage of this groundbreaking project is important, but after very carefully planning our trans-pacific route and conducting an extensive survey of each landing site, we are extremely pleased to launch the marine route survey, which will give us data necessary to safely and properly deploy the system in the coming months,” Hawaiki CEO Remi Galasso said.
“The team is doing a great job; we are on time and on budget. We are confident that with our trusted supplier, TE SubCom, our cable will be delivered as planned in mid-2018, less than two years from now.”