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Hawaiki Submarine Cable, the New Zealand owner and developer of Hawaiki submarine cable system, has selected DRFortress as its landing and operating partner in Hawaii.

As part of its system architecture, Hawaiki will land its proposed 14,000 km trans-Pacific cable from Australia and New Zealand to the US West coast in Oahu, Hawaii.

Following the coming into force of the supply contract in March and the start of the marine survey in August, Hawaiki has achieved another key milestone of the system deployment by securing its Hawaii operations through a Landing Party Agreement with DRFortress.

“Hawaii represents a key market for Hawaiki and the demand for subsea capacity to the mainland US continues to grow at an impressive rate,” said Gina Bohreer, senior vice president North America of Hawaiki.

“In 2015, we made the decision to invest substantially in Oahu and purchased land in Kapolei to build our cable landing station, which will be the first open-access station in Hawaii. The next step was to select the right partner, sharing the same carrier-neutral philosophy, to help us build and operate the station. We look forward to partnering with DRFortress, who understands our customers’ requirements in terms of neutrality and choice for local connectivity and diversity.

“The Hawaiki cable will be in service by mid-2018. We are confident that our open- access station will help to promote competition and create new business opportunities for our customers and the State of Hawaii.”

Fred Rodi, president of DRFortress, said: “We are excited about our Landing Party partnership with Hawaiki as it further advances our vision to grow the importance of the State of Hawaii as the digital hub for Asia Pacific. Hawaiki’s additional undersea cable capacity will help to ensure Hawaii’s future as a content an peering concentration point.”

“DRFortress serving as the Hawaii-based cable landing station operator for Hawaiki is a direct extension of DRFortress’ core business services of maintaining/operating our existing mission-critical data center. DRFortress is proud to be Hawaii’s largest neutral data center provider. We are confident that our partnership with a carrier-neutral cable such as Hawaiki will provide our customers with additional choice in carrier connectivity options.”