Five weeks after a volcanic eruption and subsequent tsunami on the archipelago, Tonga is once again connected to the web. On Tuesday, , one of the country’s two main ISPs, said it had restored data connectivity on the islands of Tongatapu and Eua after the Reliance submarine completed repairs on a 514-mile fiber optic cable that connects the South Pacific nation to the South Pacific. Fiji and the rest of the world. The submersible took 20 days to replace the 57-mile long cable that had broken several times.
However, not all of Tonga have internet access. The inland cable connecting the main island of Tongatapu to its remote neighbors was also damaged in the tsunami. Tonga Cable CEO James Panuve told It can take six to nine months to complete the necessary repairs, with the lack of cables delaying the work. “We don’t have enough cable,” he said.
The outage underscored the precarious level of internet access for island nations and other remote communities. The fact that it only took 5 weeks for Tonga to get back online is thanks to telecom companies from neighboring islands who shared the cable system with the country when it ran out of supplies.
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