SubCom is going to lay an internet cable that will link Australia with Hong Kong, said the U.S. submarine cable company on Thursday.
The planned route of linking Australia and Hong Kong through Papua New Guinea would not only be the most direct link between the two countries but it will also make the presence of the submarine cable company stronger in the region which is also the center point of the focus of Chinese firm Huawei Technologies Co Ltd.
The project will also provide a connection to Madang province of PNG that will likely to be further branch out to Honiara in the Solomon Islands and to Port Moresby as Huawei has also agreed to make those connections when the project was first assigned to it but afterward Australia blocked the Huawei’s project on security concerns in last year, and government committed to build the cable itself.
The cable design will also allow cable branches out to number of other locations including Taiwan, Queensland, Hawaii, Guam and Los Angeles.
The SubCom cable with this project will likely to be making the future of Huawei cables in the region more difficult, said Jonathan Pryke, director of Pacific Islands research at Sydney-based think-tank the Lowy Institute.
The internet link is also significant from development point view as it would largely increase the internet accessibility in PNG.
SubCom said that it has signed a $380 million contract with H2 Cable, a privately-owned Singapore-based firm, for supply and installation of the H2 submarine cable system, which is likely to be completed by 2022 and have a possibility of extending its trans-Pacific branch to Los Angeles.
SubCom considers the opportunity, of collaborating with H2 and expanding its experience in Australia, of great importance; and seeing the development of the H2 cable as a way to provide better connectivity to the Australasian region, said Mike Rieger, vice president of global sales and marketing at SubCom.
