What benefits will the Hawaiki transpacific cable deliver to Australia and New Zealand?

A major milestone was reached recently in the construction of a 15,000km submarine cable linking Portland, USA, to Australia and New Zealand via Hawaii.

On-time and on-budget, the New Zealand leg of the $0.5bn transpacific cable is now under construction, with the completion date of June now not far off.

The work is being carried out by Hawaiki Submarine Cable LP (HSC LP) and TE SubCom, owned by TE Connectivity which turns over upwards of $13bn a year.

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But what benefits will this bring ANZ businesses and consumers once the work is finished? In an exclusive Q&A interview with Gigabit magazine, HSC LP Co-founder and Chief Executive Rémi Galasso said: “The benefits are enormous. Companies in New Zealand and Australia have traditionally been among the most innovative in the world, with our respective digital industries undergoing a rapid transformation as they become more connected and involved with international markets. The same can be said for our research and academic institutions.

“In the Pacific we can see encouraging signs of increased growth and willingness to embrace innovation for positive change across economies and communities.

“The delivery of faster and more reliable fibre optic connectivity, in orders of magnitude greater than we have today, has profound implications for all of the people, businesses and institutions across the entire region, while also bringing all of us closer together, enabling new partnerships, collaborations and opportunities.”

Galasso also revealed the staggering fact that the international network traffic of Australia and New Zealand is doubling every two years, and that the full capacity of existing cables will be reached by 2020.

“Hawaiki’s priority is consequently to address this immediate demand for extra Terabits,” he said. “On top of that, existing cables are getting older every day and will need to be replaced and/or completed by new cable systems as soon as possible to ensure the diversity required for an always-on internet connectivity.

“To make the long story short, new transpacific cables will definitely need to be built in the coming years to secure ANZ Internet access.”

To read more from Galasso, read the full interview on Gigabit.