FEATURE
4 QUESTIONS WITH REMI GALASSO Talking Industry Trends with Hawaiki’s CEO
R
emi Galasso is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Hawaiki. He is a telecom industry veteran with over 20 years’ experience. Prior to Hawaiki, Remi created Intelia in 2005, a leading supplier of telecommunication infrastructure networks for the Pacific Islands region. Remi’s previous experience includes senior positions in Vietnam, Malaysia and Oceania for Alcatel-Lucent, including Country Senior Officer for the Pacific Islands from 2001 to 2005. Remi graduated from Tours business school (France) and holds a Bachelor of Business.
1.
What is Hawaiki’s mission?
Even since the Hawaiki cable project was conceived, our mission has been to create a truly carrier-neutral, highspeed fibre network servicing the South Pacific region, adding a much-needed new competitive presence, while greatly expanding service options along routes which have long been underserved. It’s an ambition reflected in the scale of the project, being a 15,000 km deep sea cable network linking the Pacific,
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SUBMARINE TELECOMS MAGAZINE
Australia, New Zealand and the US. This new capability is expected to help drive economic growth, prosperity and quality of life for Pacific Nations organisations, research institutions, people and communities, while forging stronger bonds linking them to Australia, New Zealand, the US and the rest of the world. New Zealand’s peak research organisation, REANNZ (Research and Education Advanced Network New Zealand) was recently connected to Hawaiki, a milestone it enthused would help drive powerful new collaborations with Universities and researchers globally and in the Pacific. For instance, the University of Otago is now using Hawaiki capacity to transfer hundreds of encrypted MRI brain scans, comprising millions of ‘data slices’, to Duke University in the US for analysis. For Pacific Islands Nations, the Hawaiki cable - which already connects American Samoa and includes stubbed branching units for Tonga, Fiji and New Caledonia - is brought in to service transformative digital applications for health and education, helping to bridge these and other facets of the current digital divide. Broadband access in American Samoa has been mul-