Hawaiki will connect Australia and New Zealand to Hawaii, and other Pacific islands including American Samoa, to Oregon on the US mainland.
Meanwhile Amazon Web Services (AWS) confirmed it would be using capacity on the new cable. “AWS customers in Australia and New Zealand are increasingly looking to take advantage of the benefits of the AWS Cloud to take their businesses global, and the Hawaiki submarine cable will play a key role in enabling that to happen,” said AWS Australia and New Zealand MD Paul Migliorini, according to ZDnet this morning.
Cable ship Global Sentinel started work from the US west coast last month. Responder has 6,500km of cable on board, said Hawaiki CEO Rémi Galasso, speaking to media in Sydney.
At the Australian end the cable will connect to Equinix’s SY4 data centre in the Sydney suburb of Alexandria. It is due to be ready for service in June 2018.
Galasso told media on Friday morning: “The system includes some branching units as well for the islands – American Samoa is already in, and we expect a few more coming in the next few months. We have included in the system a branching unit for Fiji, another one for Tonga, and another one for the French territory of New Caledonia.”
Two fibre pairs will connect Australia to the US and one pair will connect New Zealand to the US, improving connectivity for both countries. TE SubCom has a 25-year contract to maintain the cable.
