Hawaiki serves up 400 GbE services

The submarine cable system is leveraging Ciena’s platform to deliver connectivity between multiple continents.

Jan. 10, 2024

4 min read

The Hawaiki submarine cable links Australia, New Zealand, American Samoa, Hawaii and the US West Coast.

BW Digital, the owner of the Hawaiki Transpacific Cable network, started offering commercial 400GbE services. The new services are made possible by leveraging Ciena's GeoMesh Extreme submarine network solution. This follows an earlier milestone when the Hawaiki cable achieved 500 Gbps channel wavelengths.

Leveraging Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme, the 13,540km Hawaiki cable connects Australia, New Zealand, American Samoa, Hawaii, and the U.S. West Coast. The Waveserver 5 compact supports its interconnect platform, powered by WaveLogic 5 Extreme programmable 800G technology, running over the 6500 Packet-Optical Platform Submarine Line Terminal Equipment (SLTE).

Using Ciena’s Waveserver 5, the Hawaiki cable can scale to meet the surging capacity needs of the most demanding cloud applications and data services, improve reliability and availability and deliver lower latency connectivity between Oregon and Hawaii.

As a carrier-neutral and independently owned submarine cable system, Hawaiki offers many service and cost benefits for content and cloud service providers, telcos, ISPs and. Amazon, Vodafone and REANNZ are current customers.

Hawaiki Transpacific Cable’s 400GbE service, deployed using Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme, was validated using EXFO’s multi-technology 400G Test Set, offering Open Transceiver System and Intelligent Pluggable Optics test application.

Results demonstrated smooth traffic and no latency impact across the Sydney to Hillsboro, Oregon segment. BW Digital was supported by WWG Comtest, EXFO's New Zealand partner, for the loan and technical support on the EXFO Test Set.

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About the Author

Sean Buckley

Sean is responsible for establishing and executing the editorial strategies of Lightwave and Broadband Technology Report across their websites, email newsletters, events, and other information products.