Local construction company McKay will design and build the Hawaiki cable landing station at Mangawhai Heads in New Zealand’s North Island, Hawaiki has announced.
Construction of the cable, which will connect Australia, New Zealand and the US, has already started and it is due to be in service in June 2018.
Hawaiki CEO Remi Galasso said: “This contract represents a key step forward for Hawaiki system deployment in New Zealand. We are proud to participate to the economic development of the Northland region and are confident that McKay will deliver this critical piece of infrastructure in the most efficient and timely manner.”
Hawaiki, named after the original home of the Māori people before they canoed to New Zealand centuries ago, will be a carrier-neutral cable with a design capacity of 42Tbps.
It will connect Sydney in Australia with Mangawhai Heads in New Zealand, and then on to American Samoa, Hawaii and then Oregon in mainland US.
The company is aiming for 135ms latency over the full 13,528km route from Sydney to Hillsboro, Oregon. Kapolei, Hawaii to Hillsboro – a distance of 4,522km – will have 46ms latency. TE SubCom is making the cable for Hawaiki.
McKay will undertake complete civil, building, electrical, standby generation, AC and DC UPS systems, and HVAC systems to provide the required cable landing facility for Hawaiki. MD Lindsay Faithfull said: “McKay is proud to be associated to such a landmark project. Hawaiki had very particular requirements and we came up with a unique Northland based solution that included our local partners and met Hawaiki’s needs.”
