Asia-Pacific presence strengthened with two cable landing stations

The new cable landing stations will be deployed in Luganville, Vanuatu, and Honiara, Solomon Islands. They will terminate the new 1,600km ICN2 cable being laid between the two countries. Interchange, a Vanuatu-based consortium focussed on delivering nation-building telecommunications technologies and infrastructure throughout Melanesia, completed its ICN1 project in 2014, linking Vanuatu directly into the high capacity Southern Cross cable between Australia and the United States.

Simon Fletcher, CEO, Interchange, stated: “As a critical infrastructure provider it is vital that all components of our system meet the highest standards. Flexenclosure was selected as our cable landing station facilities supplier based on the high quality of their product, their proven track record in our sector and their strong regional presence.”

Construction of the two expandable 21m² cable landing stations will commence at Flexenclosure’s factory in Sweden in October, be shipped to Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands in January and are expected to be fully operational by May 2019. Their locations in the Pacific’s Ring of Fire, a 40,000km long region in which 90% of the world’s earthquakes occur, requires the facilities to be built to withstand zone four seismic activity. They will also be constructed to defy the most severe category five cyclones.

David King, CEO, Flexenclosure, explained: “eCentre is the ideal cable landing station solution. We are able to deliver ruggedised facilities – able to withstand the harshest of environmental conditions, to the most remote parts of the planet extremely fast. And with orders in five countries in the last 18 months, we are firmly establishing ourselves as the leading provider of cable landing stations in the Pacific region.”

Flexenclosure is a specialist designer and manufacturer of prefabricated eCentre edge data centres and cable landing stations for the submarine cable industry. They can be built to accommodate permanent staff or to be unmanned 24/7 facilities. And with eCentre’s prefabricated modular construction, facilities can easily be expanded to accommodate additional subsea cables as they arrive and data equipment as traffic grows, all without interrupting on-going operations.