Tonga’s local telephone and internet service providers, Tonga Telecommunications Corporation (TCC) and Digicel are using satellite links to restore their services to the two outer islands groups, with hopes that the domestic submarine fibre optic cable might be fixed in the next few weeks.
Their Vava’u and Ha’apai telephone and internet services are surviving on low bandwidth backup satellite capacity, which at peak times has lower than normal capacity and quality.
The two outer island groups north of Tongatapu, have suffered poor telephone and internet services since June 29, when the inter-island domestic submarine cable went dark.
The local network providers, TCC and Digicel restored some of their services to Vava’u and Ha’apai using satellites.
TCC CEO Sione Veikoso told Matangi Tonga that their service quality drops during peak times, but after peak hours the network operation was normal.
“The mobile network has been fully restored with both voice and mobile internet. During peak times the service quality degrades and is not as good as when the fibre cable was still connected.”
“As for fixed lines services, the landline voice has been fully restored,” he said.
“In addition to this for fixed internet customers we provide satellite VSAT terminals for some of the customers whom wish to use this option both in Ha’apai and Vava’u,” he said.
Meanwhile, Digicel CEO, Daniel Horan said their services had been close to their normal capacity, since last Friday, 02 August.
“As with the submarine cable, when that was broken we added a satellite service to Vava’u to get it up and running in about half [bandwidth capacity] what we previously had. I’m very pleased to say that we’ve increased that so now, we’re back up to somewhat close to what we originally had, from a bandwidth perspective.”
He said that customers in Vava’u could now get Digicel, 4G, 3G, and 2G.
Ha’apai had already got their services operating because it’s a smaller market, and was easier, whereas for Vava’u, it was 10 – 15 times bigger and more complex to fix.
“So that has taken a little bit more time. But yes, it’s all back to normal from a customer’s perspective. You should be able to do all your normal video, YouTube, all of that sort of good stuff.”
“From our perspective right now, which I think maybe slightly different to some other companies, we’re more or less back to normal.”
Daniel said they would run that service for as long as it takes until the submarine cable is fixed.
“We’re hoping obviously that Tonga cable will be able to fix the submarine cable sometime in the next few weeks.”
TCC CEO Sione Veikoso said the satellite back-up capacity TCC is paying for, is more expensive than what they paid for fibre services. Meanwhile, the cable repair ship CS Lodbrog had departed Fiji and was on its way to Tonga, and was expected to arrive Wednesday, Tonga Cable ACEO, Sosafate Kolo, said.