Hawaiian Telcom says SEA-US cable system secured FCC license, sets Q2 2017 completion date

Hawaiian Telcom and its submarine cable partners have received FCC approval for the landing license for its Southeast Asia – U.S. (SEA-US) fiber cable system, enabling a connection between the U.S. and Indonesia.

Set to be completed in the second quarter of 2017, the SEA-US consortium completed the connection of the Hermosa Beach, California shore-end.

By the end of January, the deployment of California’s cable landing station will be completed. In February the installation vessel is expected to arrive in Honolulu, Hawaii, after completing its main-lay construction between California and Hawaii.

SEA-US is expected to deliver an initial design capacity of 20 Tbps capacity, using NEC’s 100 Gbps technology. The ship laying the submarine fiber is en route to Honolulu, scheduled to arrive in February.

RELATED: Hawaiian Telcom says SEA-US submarine cable producing nearly $30M in sales

Over the past year, the consortium has made considerable progress getting the cable ready for production customers. During the third quarter, repeater manufacturing was completed and accepted by the consortium. Fiber cable is being manufactured and is expected to be completed early this year.

“We continue to actively market the remaining 40% capacity we have on this system,” said Scott Barber, CEO of Hawaiian Telcom during the telco’s third quarter call, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript. “Demand for this capacity continues to remain strong, and as such we are confident that we’d be able to further monetize this investment.”

Other SEA-US Cable System consortium members are Globe Telecom (Manila, Philippines), GTA (Tamuning, Guam), GTI (Los Angeles, California), Hawaiian Telcom (Honolulu, Hawaii), RTI (San Francisco, California), Telin (Jakarta, Indonesia) and Telkom USA (Los Angeles, California).