Has Hawaiki raised a cent?

Sorry to be bad cop, again.

But despite its run of good press, I'm not sure Hawaiki is approaching a tipping point in its bid to raise $US300 million for a cable between Australia, NZ, various Pacific Islands and the US.

I hope a second cable gets laid. Two suppliers would be more competitive than one.

And it's good that Aussie ISPs iiNet and TPG, and NZ's Orcon and Voyager, and Crown company Reannz, have signed letters of intent to become anchor customers.

But who'll chip in money to help the cable actually get laid, so those ISPs can buy that bandwidth?

Is anyone chipping in money up front? It doesn't seem like the potential ISP customers are, if their announcements are taken at face value (and as one Pacific Fibre veteran tells NBR "It's very difficult to raise funding off good intent.")

Is their any vendor financing? Institutional investors? Any part willing to extend a line of credit (as ANZ did for Pacific Fibre, offering to fund up to 45% of its $NZ400 million build through debt, should the Kiwi startup line-up enough investors).

NBR ONLINE asked CEO Remi Glasso if Hawaiki had secured any funding.

Mr Glasso said he couldn't comment. It was confidential information [UPDATE: The CEO emailed NBR: "Hawaiki project financing is based on a mix of equity, presales and debt. We are working on those three components in paralell and are currently into due diligence with potential investors and banks. The French government is not involved in Hawaiki Cable financing."]

I hope investors are being lined up behind the flurry of PR releases about ISPs pledging to buy bandwidth.

I really do.

But so far Hawaiki is merely following in the footsteps of the Pacific Fibre. I'm not seeing any new element to its game plan that could see it succeed where Drury, Tindall and Morgan's company failed.

But my fear is Mr Glasso is on another quixotic quest (the former Alcatel-Lucent exec has been trying to raise capital for a second cable since 2007), and that we're wasting time and delaying the serious debate that has to happen over a public-private partnership for a second cable  to the US (see Rod Drury's plan outlined here) - or to pursue a second concept put forward by Rod Drury; to pursue a solution based around international bandwidth contracts for the Local Fibre Companies (Chorus, Northpower, Ultrafast Fibre and Enable) under the UFB schemes.

The clock is ticking. Next year, Telecom, Vodafone and Telstra (easily the biggest Australasian bandwidth buyers and conspicous by their absence from Hawaiki's anchor customer list) will lay their $US60 million Tasman Global Access cable between Auckland and Sydney. It ill go live in 2015. There will be some satisfaction for cable competition advocates in the trans-Tasman second cable being laid; it's very presence will undermine Southern Cross Cable Network's argument it's providing all the bandwidth NZ needs at a competitive price. But it will likely destroy the business case for a new Australia-NZ-US cable. 

ckeall@nbr.co.nz