Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) has been awarded a new system in the South Pacific Ocean that will connect the three Tokelau atolls of Atafu, Nukunonu and Fakaofo.
This unrepeated (OALC5) 250km-long open cable based on 2 fiber pairs and built by ASN, will provide a connection to the archipelago up to 20Tb/s.
This new subsea cable will be interconnected with the Southern Cross NEXT submarine cable, also built and deployed by ASN.
Currently using satellite to connect to the global network, Tokelau’s three atolls will be connected by subsea cable to Australia, New Zealand, the West Coast of the USA, Fiji and Kiribati, providing a great boost to international connectivity and bringing for the first time, high speed telecommunications capacity to Tokelau.
This new subsea cable will allow the Tokelau population to access all the services enabled by high-bandwidth communications and bring them into the worldwide digital community.
The Tokelau Cable is co-funded by the Government of New Zealand and the Government of Tokelau, and the cable will be managed by Teletok on behalf of the two government partners. The system will be ready at the beginning of 2021.
About Alcatel Submarine Networks
Alcatel Submarine Networks, part of Nokia, leads the industry in terms of transmission capacity and installed base with more than 650,000 km of optical submarine systems deployed worldwide, enough to circumnavigate the globe 15 times. From traditional Telecom applications to Content and “Over The Top” Service Provider infrastructures, as well as to offshore Oil and Gas applications, ASN provides all elements of a turnkey global undersea transmission systems, tailored to individual customer’s needs. An extensive Services portfolio completes its comprehensive offering for the submarine business, including project management, installation and commissioning, along with marine and maintenance operations performed by ASN’s fully owned fleet of cable ships.
Lassner’s presentation, “Advanced Networking for Research and Education: View from the Pacific,” discussed R&E Networking (REN) updates in the Pacific. It also featured new initiatives that help include Pacific islands in global research and education networks, such as the Guam Open R&E Exchange, the 3D HoloCampus project that connects Hawaiʻi and American Samoa for education, the PolyREN initiative in French Polynesia, and the new submarine fiber systems that link other island nations and economies.
About GLOBECOM
GLOBECOM is one of the IEEE Communications Society’s two flagship conferences dedicated to driving innovation in nearly every aspect of communications. Thousands of participants gather to present research results, share visions and ideas, obtain updates on latest technologies and expand professional and social networking.
American Samoa Community College (ASCC) has switched on a ground-breaking digital platform that will stream 3D holograms of University of Hawaiʻi faculty members to deliver classes and engage with ASCCstudents in real-time. Students and officials at the HoloCampus launch on August 20 received a lecture by UH Mānoa Water Resources Research Center researcher Chris Shuler on the subject of “sustainability and resilience,” a theme with special significance for the people of American Samoa and Pacific Islands nations as they face challenges such as increasing plastic waste and more dramatic weather systems brought about by climate change.
Running on Hawaiki transpacific submarine cable, which directly connects American Samoa and Hawaiʻiusing technology from Canadian tech firm ARHT Media, the HoloCampus solution is the first of its kind in the Pacific, and is set to redefine how schools and universities connect and collaborate in the region.
“HoloCampus enables a remarkable new approach to distance learning,” said UH President David Lassner. “We expect that our work with ASCC will spark new ideas and approaches for academic collaborations across the Pacific and beyond.”
Researcher Chris Shuler teaches to a class in Samoa from a studio in Mānoa.
ASCC and UH are working together to create specific course programs running on HoloCampus, which could lead to students in American Samoa earning credits and grades toward UH degrees, with UHacademics and students benefiting from greater access to ASCC and its teachers, learning and resources.
“It’s definitely super cool to go to American Samoa as a hologram. This setup is kind of novel. Doing distance learning on larger screens or on Skype is pretty cool and I think this new internet connectivity is really going to make that a possibility,” said Shuler who presented his recent research done in American Samoa.
He added, “The main goal of our American Samoa research program is to improve peoples lives in the territory. Working in such a remote location necessitates some creativity, so some things that make our program distinctive are: 1) a huge focus on building and maintaining relationships with key stakeholders and 2) continuing experimentation with recent advancements in cyber-infrastructure, social networking, and open-source cloud-computing tools to make our work accessible to those who need it, despite the big distances between islands.”
“HoloCampus is a culmination of the vision and hard work of many people inspired by the challenge of harnessing technology to provide American Samoa’s young people with access to the best opportunities for advancing their education, and creating a better future for them and their communities,” said Governor Lolo M. Moliga.
Moliga added, “The partnership between Hawaiki and American Samoa has delivered on its promises to bridge the digital divide in our Territory. Having ready access to high speed internet is already helping high school and college students with their learning, but the ability to have academics from around the world literally beamed into ASCC classrooms offers an exciting glimpse into what education and learning will look like in the future.”
Speaking at the launch in Pago Pago, Hawaiki Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer Ludovic Hutier emphasized the importance of international connectivity for Pacific Islands nations and territories.
ASCC President Rosevonne Makaiwi Pato noted that HoloCampus will also spur new opportunities for American Samoa to more effectively share knowledge and insights from the U.S. territory with UHstudents and academics, and potentially more academic institutions in the region and throughout the world as the technology is deployed more widely.
The launch of HoloCampus comes just 13 months after the Hawaiki cable went live in American Samoa, resulting in a dramatic increase in connectivity on the U.S. territory.
How does HoloCampus work?
Holograms are created using ARHT’s patented “capture studios,” which allow people and 3D content to be broadcast live, virtually anywhere, in HD or 4K, on a variety of devices, with virtually zero latency.
A speaker can see the room via a video signal back to the capture studio and speak to students responding to their questions and reactions in real-time.
Streaming on platforms like Facebook and YouTube is quick and easy, while broadcasts are also able to be recorded to the cloud and shared after the event.
The memorandum was signed by UH President David Lassner and Nicole Ferguson, REANNZ chief executive officer, at the Asia Pacific Advanced Network (APAN) meeting in Auckland.
REANNZ, the research and education network that interconnects New Zealand’s universities and Crown Research Institutes, recently activated its new connectivity into the global research and education network fabric on the new Hawaiki fiber optic cable system running from New Zealand to Australia and the U.S. mainland via Hawaiʻi.
The memorandum outlines assistance UH will provide in connecting REANNZ to Asian research and education networks via Hawaiʻi and Guam. It also articulates a shared interest in bringing research and education networks to the Pacific islands, which have been historically unserved and unconnected.
Keynote address at data networking conference
Lassner provided the keynote address at the APAN conference in August. The gathering welcomed more than 300 networking experts from throughout the Asia-Pacific region, including New Zealand, Australia, Fiji, China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Hong Kong.
No stranger to the group, UH has hosted the APAN meeting four times, beginning in 2001. Lassner’s keynote, “Pacific networking: The voyage continues,” focused on the explosion of new fiber optic projects in the Pacific.
While in New Zealand, Lassner also visited Wellington and met with government officials and REANNZ. He provided perspectives on global research and education networking, and opportunities for New Zealand, particularly with its new capacity via the Hawaiki fiber system.
The University of Guam unveiled its high-speed GOREX network on January 18 at the Office of Information Technology. From left to right: Andrew Guihama, IT Project Management Coordinator; Leo Llegado, Computer Center Assistant; Randy Dahilig, Jr. Network Engineer (GOREX Local Hands); Randy Wiegand, UOG Vice President of Administration and Finance; Jose Santiago, Jr. Network Engineer (GOREX Local Hands); Dr. Tom Schils, UOG Marine Lab Director; Dr. Robert Underwood, UOG President; Steven Mamaril, Jr. Information Security Analyst (GOREX Local Hands); Dr. Bastian Bentlage, UOG EPSCoR Grant Co-Principal Investigator; Rommel Hidalgo, UOG Chief Information Officer; Frank Lujan, Chief Technology Officer, Government of Guam Office of Technology and Co-Chair of the UOG EPSCoR Science and Technology Steering Committee; and Andrew Gayle, Chief Operating Officer, GTA and Co-Chair of the UOG EPSCoR Science and Technology Steering Committee.
The University of Guam today unveiled its new ultra-high-speed 100Gb GOREX Network during an event at the UOG Office of Information Technology. The Guam Open Research & Education eXchange (GOREX) connects Guam to Hawaii and California via the new SEA-US fiber-optic submarine cable.
Installation was completed this week by technicians from UOG, University of Hawaii, and GTA. Guam is now connected to the global Research and Education Network fabric and is now capable of supporting high-speed exchanges of very large scientific datasets between Guam and other research institutions.
To put into context what the GOREX network can do, it would take over three years to download 1,000 terabytes of data using a 100-Megabit-per-second network. Through GOREX’s ultra-high-speed 100-Gigabit-per-second network, the same 1,000 terabytes of data can now be downloaded in just 1-day.
Because of the sheer amount of data collected, shared, and analyzed, UOG research centers such as the Marine Laboratory and the Water Environmental Research Institute (WERI) will benefit the most from GOREX at the onset. However, UOG President Robert Underwood believes that the true impact to the island community is in the opportunity for data access, exchange, and analysis in other fields such as healthcare, economics, and the social sciences.
“We can now conduct research at complex levels, not just for the sciences, but in other fields as well,” said Underwood. “Think about the issues that we discuss as a society and how we make many decisions with limited data. GOREX gives our students and faculty the tools to truly exchange and analyze large amounts of data in any number of fields with other institutions all over the world. And as a University, it is our responsibility to report our findings back to the community. That’s the impact.”
International Partnerships
UOG Chief Information Officer Rommel Hidalgo says the GOREX facility and the ultra-high-speed SEA-US connection on Guam would not have been possible without the leadership and support of the University of Hawai’i System and its President, David Lassner, who has been working to increase research and education network connectivity in the Pacific for more than 20 years.
“We are thankful for the vision, support, and leadership of President Lassner and the University of Hawai’i, for enabling the implementation of GOREX. We are also thankful to Steven Huter and the NSRC for their help in improving UOG’s network and training the UOG network team that will be supporting GOREX. The GOREX consortium is on track to install additional ultra-high-speed connections using other submarine cables. GOREX will soon connect Asia, Australia, and America through Guam,” said Rommel Hidalgo.
The University of Oregon’s Network Startup Resource Center (NSRC) provided training support to UOG network technicians. “We are delighted to support the University of Guam’s efforts to augment the institution’s scientific research and education capabilities for faculty and students,” said Hervey Allen, Assistant Director, NSRC. “The dedication of the UOG Information Technology team and executive leadership will create the necessary cyberinfrastructure for facilitating data-intensive research in Guam and provide benefits to other U.S. territories in the Pacific Islands.”
The GOREX consortium includes the University of Hawai’i, the University of Oregon Network Startup Resource Center (NSRC), the University of Guam, Pacific Wave, Australia’s Academic and Research Network (AARNet), Internet2, Singapore’s SingAREN, New Zealand’s REANNZ, and other partners. The overarching goal is to promote increased growth and effectiveness of data‐intensive and highly collaborative research and education activities engaging the Asia‐Pacific region with the global Research and Education community.
For more information, visit the UOG GOREX website at http://gorex.uog.edu or call the UOG Office of Information Technology at (671) 735-2640.
