New Zealand: Hawaiki 30Tbps Trans-Pacific Subsea Cable Commences Construction
April 3rd, 2016Finally.
Via: ZDnet:
The 14,000km subsea cable connecting Australia and New Zealand to Hawaii and the West Coast of the United States has finally commenced construction, almost three years after first being announced.
The cable will be jointly constructed by Hawaiki Submarine Cable, based in Auckland, and TE SubCom, a company from Eatontown, New Jersey. According to the two companies, they began route planning in June last year, and expect completion of the project by mid-2018.
The cable, which has the option to extend to several South Pacific islands along the route via TE SubCom’s optical add/drop multiplexing (OADM) nodes, will have a capacity of over 30 Terabits per second (Tbps). The cable makes use of TE SubCom’s C100U+ Submarine Line Terminating Equipment (SLTE).
Roman roads?
Either China or the U.S.
The U.S. killed the last cable that was going to happen because of Chinese involvement back in 2012:
https://www.cryptogon.com/?p=30632
Pacific Fibre director Rod Drury told interest.co.nz it was made “very clear” by American authorities they would not permit significant Chinese investment in the US$400 million 13,000 km fibre-optic cable linking Auckland, Sydney and Los Angeles.
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Hawaiki must have kissed the ring:
https://www.cryptogon.com/?p=36608
The United States Defence Department could help pay for a new cable linking New Zealand, Australia, the United States and several Pacific Islands, an Auckland source says.
He said the department had an interest in spending about US$100 million (NZ$120m) to directly or indirectly acquire a pair of optical fibres between the US, Australia and American Samoa to link its defence bases.