The subsea cable providing Tonga with broadband, the Tonga Cable, has been out since 20:30 local time on Sunday night, with the nation now relying on satellite internet instead.
Provided by Kacific, the nation’s digital connection to the outside world is now a Ku-band satellite accessed through local ISP Ezinet. Tonga Cable Director, Paula Piveni Piukala, said Kacific is working to boost internet and voice capacity for priority communications.
“We appreciate Kacific’s assistance, as Tonga currently has no other internet or mobile phone connectivity to the outside world,” Piukala said.
“Kacific’s satellite service ensures that essential services can be maintained as we work to resolve the issue.”
The 827km cable between Tonga and Fiji that connect to the Southern Cross Cable went live in August 2013, and was funded jointly by the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank. It was later extended out to the Ha’apai and Vava’u islands in April last year.
The 60Tbps Southern Cross NEXT cable was originally going to traverse Tonga waters, but was changed to go through Wallis and Fortuna waters instead.
Fiji, Tokelau, and Kiribati have signed onto the $350 million NEXT cable due to go live later this year.
SUBSEA CABLES ACROSS THE GLOBE
- Vocus’ Australia-Singapore Cable (ASC)
- Vocus’ North West Cable System (NWCS) between Darwin and Port Hedland, and the new Tiwi Islands spur being added
- The Australian government’s Coral Sea subsea cable, being constructed by Vocus to connect Australia, Papua New Guinea, and Solomon Islands and funded through the foreign aid budget
- Google’s Dunant transatlantic subsea cable between Virginia Beach in the United States to the French Atlantic coast
- The Indian government’s Chennai-Andaman and Nicobar islandssubsea cable, being built by NEC
- Southern Cross Cables’ NEXT subsea cable system between Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, being built by SubPartners
- The Trident subsea cable system connecting Perth with Singapore via Indonesia
- The Jupiter subsea cable connecting the US, Japan, and the Philippines and being built by a consortium including Facebook, Amazon, SoftBank, NTT Com, PLDT, and PCCW
- The Hawaiki subsea cable between Australia, New Zealand, and the US
- Superloop’s Hong Kong cable
- Telstra’s Hong Kong Americas (HKA) cable between Hong Kong and the US
- Telstra’s Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN) between Hong Kong and the US
- Google’s Japan-Guam-Australia (JGA) cable system
- The Asia-Pacific Gateway (APG) subsea cable connecting China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, and Singapore, owned by a consortium including China Telecom, China Unicom, China Mobile, NTT Communications, KT Corporation, LG Uplus, StarHub, Chunghwa Telecom, CAT, Global Transit Communications, Viettel, and VNPT, and being constructed by NEC
- The Southeast Asia Japan 2 cable (SJC2), which will have 11 landing stations in Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, being built by NEC and funded by a consortium including China Mobile International, Chunghwa Telecom, Chuan Wei, Facebook, KDDI, Singtel, SK Broadband, and VNPT
- The Bay to Bay Express Cable System (BtoBE), connecting Singapore and Hong Kong with the US, being funded by consortium including Facebook, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and China Mobile International, and being built by NEC
Article source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/cable-outage-sees-tonga-fall-back-to-satellite-internet/#ftag=RSSbaffb68