As part of its system architecture, the New Zealand owner and developer of the Hawaiki submarine cable system will land its proposed cable from Australia and New Zealand to the US West coast in Oahu, Hawaii.
"Hawaii represents a key market for Hawaiki and the demand for subsea capacity to the mainland US continues to grow at an impressive rate," said Gina Bohreer, senior vice president of North America at Hawaiki.
"In 2015, we made the decision to invest substantially in Oahu and purchased land in Kapolei to build our cable landing station, which will be the first open-access station in Hawaii. The next step was to select the right partner, sharing the same carrier-neutral philosophy, to help us build and operate the station. We look forward to partnering with DRFortress, who understands our customers’ requirements in terms of neutrality and choice for local connectivity and diversity."
Fred Rodi, president of DRFortress, added: "We are excited about our landing party partnership with Hawaiki as it further advances our vision to grow the importance of the State of Hawaii as the digital hub for Asia-Pacific. Hawaiki’s additional undersea cable capacity will help to ensure Hawaii’s future as a content and peering concentration point."
"DRFortress serving as the Hawaii-based cable landing station operator for Hawaiki is a direct extension of DRFortress’ core business services of maintaining/operating our existing mission-critical data center. DRFortress is proud to be Hawaii’s largest neutral data center provider. We are confident that our partnership with a carrier-neutral cable such as Hawaiki will provide our customers with additional choice in carrier connectivity options."
The news comes after Hawaiki Submarine Cable and TE SubCom launched a marine route survey earlier this month.
The Hawaiki cable will be in service by mid-2018.
