Hawaiki Groundbreaking Ceremony Held in New Zealand

A vital infrastructure project for New Zealand was launched on November 23 by the Prime Minister, Rt Hon John Key, and Minister of Communications Hon Amy Adams, when they broke the soil for the Hawaiki submarine cable landing station at Bream Tail, Mangawhai Heads, Northland, New Zealand.

The 14,000-km Hawaiki submarine cable will link New Zealand to Australia, Hawaii and mainland United States, with options to expand to several South Pacific islands.

The $NZ500 million project was announced in March this year when all-New Zealand equity funding was secured from Remi Galasso, a submarine cable industry veteran, well known New Zealand businessman Sir Eion Edgar and telecommunications entrepreneur Malcolm Dick.

“The Hawaiki cable brings huge benefits to New Zealand in terms of greater capacity, competition in Internet pricing, resilience and security of supply, and increased opportunities for our technology and IT industries,” said Hawaiki Chairman Sir Eion Edgar.

“We have surveyed the whole coast of Northland and selected Bream Tail in Mangawhai Heads as the best landing site for our cable system. Good local conditions, suitable water depth for the cable ship and easy access to terrestrial fiber networks were the key conditions to pick Bream Tail Farm,” said Remi Galasso, CEO of Hawaiki. “The build of the landing station will start early next year to have the station ready by mid-2017.”

The Chair of the REANNZ Board, Jim Donovan, applauded the exciting milestone reached today by Hawaiki. "As a founding customer of the Hawaiki Cable project, REANNZ (Research & Education Advanced Network New Zealand) operates New Zealand’s high-performance network, supporting the specific needs of educators, innovators, researchers and scientists around the country. The launch of the landing station takes us one step closer to further enhancing New Zealand’s connectivity capability, creating an essential piece of infrastructure, and providing much needed new capacity and diversity of supply," he said.

For more information, visit www.hawaikicable.co.nz.