Hawaiki Transpacific Cable System New Zealand leg under way

Former Prime Minister John key at the sod turning for the Hawaiki Submarine Cable landing station at Mangawhai in November 2016. PHOTO/FILE

The Hawaiki Transpacific Cable System is expected to ready for service in June this year.

Hawaiki Submarine Cable LP and TE SubCom has announced more than half of the 15,000km of undersea fiber-optic cable in the Hawaiki transpacific cable system have been completed.

TE SubCom's cable-laying vessel CS Responder was to begin marine activities for the New Zealand leg of the system this month.

The operation will include the landing of the Hawaiki cable in Mangawhai Heads.

When complete the service will make 43 terabits per second (Tb) of new capacity (enough to download 1200 HD movies in less than a second) available to the market and create more competition.

The Southern Cross Cable has a capacity of 12 terabits per second. Total NZ bandwidth was expected to reach 2Tb in 2018, with a growth of 45 per cent per year.

The Oregon to Hawaii segment has been completed with the international segment between Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii under way since early November 2017.

Cable landings in Pacific City, Oregon; Oahu, Hawaii; and Sydney, Australia have been completed. Cable landing in American Samoa is scheduled in March 2018.

Hawaiki will link Australia and New Zealand to the mainland United States, as well as Hawaii and American Samoa, with options to expand to additional South Pacific islands.