The marine route survey for a planned new subsea cable linking Hong Kong with the US territory of Guam in the Pacific Ocean has commenced.
The 3,900km cable system is being developed by RTI Connectivity - an affiliate company of wholesale transport provider RAM Telecom International - with NEC as the supplier.
HK-G will have a design capacity of more than 48Tbps and will contribute to the much-needed expansion of communications networks between Asia and the US. Construction of the cable is expected to be complete in the fourth quarter of 2019.
The cable is being built as an extension of the recently completed SEA-US subsea cable system linking the Philippines and Indonesia with Guam and the US, and and both cables will converge in the same cable landing station in Guam.
Construction of the $250 million SEA-US cable system was completed last month, and it is now ready for service after being accepted by the SEA-US consortium.
The SEA-US consortium comprises RTI, Globe Telecom in the Philippines, Indonesia's Telin and US subsidiary Telin USA, Hawaiian Telecom and Guam's GTA.
“Initiating the HK-G marine route survey is an important milestone towards our goal of providing fully diverse transpacific connectivity,” RTI president and CEO Russ Matulich said.
“Once completed, HK-G will seamlessly interconnect with SEA-US, allowing customers to not only diversify their traffic between Hong Kong to Los Angeles, but also enabling them to port their existing capacity to different destinations.