The $350 million Hawaiki Transpacific Submarine Cable System has completed its final landing in American Samoa, with the United States territory to gain access to 200Gb of additional capacity from the cable.
The final splice will be completed ahead of the 15,000km subsea cable, connecting Australia and New Zealand to Hawaii and the West Coast of the US, going live in June.
"With Hawaiki's Transpacific Cable Network, Pacific Nations will soon have more than enough capacity to comfortably support crucial services such as e-health and e-learning that will have a significant and immediate impact on the many diverse economies and communities throughout the region," Hawaiki Submarine Cable LP CEO Rémi Galasso said.
Hawaiki had announced reaching the halfway point[1] in its rollout across the Pacific Ocean in January, with the company also being granted a US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) licence in December.
The US domestic segment between Oregon and Hawaii had been completed during the final quarter of 2017. Hawaiki then began laying the international portion[2] of its subsea cable in November.
"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," Galasso told media at the time.
"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."
American Samoa will be the cable's hub for the Polynesian region, he said, with the company remaining positive that it will bring broadband pricing down in the region. There will be three fibre pairs: Two between Sydney and the US, and one from New Zealand to the US.
Two maintenance vessels, one based