My Account
A 15,000km trans-Pacific fibre-optic cable that can more than double New Zealand’s internet capacity made landfall at a remote Mangawhai beach early on Tuesday, February 13.
The $500 million Hawaiki Submarine Cable (HSC) will connect with Sydney and Oregon, with branches off to American Samoa and Hawaii, making it only the second such cable connecting NZ with the United States. It has four times the capacity of the existing international link.
The beach at Bream Tail Farm, just north of Mangawhai Heads, was chosen to land the cable due to a combination of luck and geography, according to Richard Howarth, HSC’s programme manager for NZ, Hawaii and Pacific Islands.
He says the cable could have come ashore anywhere in New Zealand, but the combination of a sandy beach, few rocks, deep water just offshore and proximity to services made Mangawhai ideal.
“We look for somewhere that, as well as having correct landing conditions, is reasonably close to infrastructure, as the cable must connect to the land-based communications network,” he says.
The HSC cable is being channelled underground using horizontal direct drilling to minimise the environmental impact on sand dunes. It will link to a new cable station that is being built on Cove Road.
“Cove Road is a good location because there are existing cables from Spark and Vodafone here,” he says.
HSC programme manager Richard Howarth.
The line was brought in by specialist ship CS Responder, which can carry 8000kms of cable in its hold and had already laid the HSC from Sydney via Norfolk Island. The cable itself is small in diameter – about the size of a garden hose – thanks to modern fibre-optic capacity and the high-tech materials used for its protective sleeve. To avoid boating and fishing hazards, it is buried in the seabed at a depth of about 1.5 metres until the water gets to around 1500 metres deep, at which point the cable is simply laid along the ocean floor.
Once at Mangawhai, the cable was passed from the back of the ship to a smaller boat, which floated it into shore using a line of buoys.
The northern branch of the cable has already been laid from Oregon to Tokelau, and the whole system is due to be operational by the end of June.
Richard Howarth says that while the HSC can provide improved internet capacity and speeds for the whole of New Zealand, how that is rolled out is not down to Hawaiki.
“We’re a wholesaler,” he says. “We’re providing the pipeline to on-sell capacity to Spark, Vodafone and other second tier operators in NZ. It’s over to them how they use and market that.
“There’s only one line apart from this one, so Hawaiki is providing some well-needed expansion in capacity and competition in the marketplace.”
