BW Digital and PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia International (Telin) are partnering on a portion of the Hawaiki Nui submarine cable system.
The companies signed a memorandum of understanding in Washington DC this week to jointly construct the 10,000km Hawaiki Nui 1 cable, which will be part of the wider 26,000km system.
Originally announced in 2021, the Hawaiki Nui cable system will have an expected capacity of more than 240Tbps.
The Hawaiki Nui 1 cable will link Australia, Indonesia, and Singapore, with branches to the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, and Timor Leste.
Expected to be operational by 2027, the cable will also provide the first direct cable route between Sydney and Darwin, and from Darwin to Singapore.
Telin will also act as the landing party for the Indonesian portion of the cable. Hawaiki previously selected PT Mora Telematika Indonesia (Moratelindo) as its landing partner for the Indonesian portion of the cable – and said it would go live in 2025 and then 2026.
The remaining portion of the cable system will link to the US and New Zealand. Potential branches to French Polynesia have also been previously mooted.
“BW Digital is pleased to forge a strategic alliance with Telin to deliver Hawaiki Nui 1 submarine cable and serve the ever-growing capacity requirements between Australia, Indonesia, and Singapore,” said Ludovic Hutier, CEO of BW Digital.
Budi Satria Dharma Purba, CEO of Telin, added: “Over the next five years, there is a healthy growth in data center capacity across Singapore, Australia, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Through our partnership with BW Digital and as part of our overall seven systems of ICE subsea cable, we aim to bridge the connectivity gap between data centers across these nations and shape the future of the Asia Pacific subsea landscape.”
A wholly owned subsidiary of Telkom Indonesia, Telin said it currently operates in Indonesia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, Malaysia, Taiwan, the US, Timor Leste, UAE, and Myanmar. The operator has more than 250,140km of cable system length and more than 19 data centers across the APAC region.
BW Digital owns and operates the Hawaiki subsea cable linking New Zealand and Australia to the US, launched in 2018, after acquiring Hawaiki in May 2022.
The company announced plans to develop an 80MW data center in Batam, Indonesia, earlier this year. Earlier this month, BW Digital installed a solar panel system at its cable landing station in Mangawhai Heads, New Zealand. The cable landing station will also land the Hawaiki Nui cable when operational.
Last month, Vocus and Google partnered to extend the Honomoana cable to New Zealand. The cable is set to go live in 2026.
