The disaster of the underwater volcano Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha’apai is still there for all to see: the images as fascinating as they are dramatic have traveled around the world, perhaps not even fully recounting the power of a natural event that has brought an entire country to its knees and exposed the populations living in areas to danger. apparently far from the place where the eruption occurred – see the coasts of Peru.
Once the inhabitants of Tonga were safe and the volcano’s fury exhausted, the country’s priority was to restoration of networks telecommunication, go completely offline due to the breakdown of the submarine cable that connects Tonga with the Fiji Islands, the only way that allows the local population to access the network. Elon Musk has also taken action in recent weeks to provide help through Starlink, despite the fact that it was more of an emergency solution than a definitive one.
Good news finally arrives from Digicel, one of the country’s two providers, which has announced the restoration of the fiber optic cable that had suffered multiple breaks in a section just over 91km long, now completely replaced thanks to the work carried out by the Reliance submarine and lasted two weeks. Tonga thus returns to be connected to the rest of the world, albeit limited to the main island Tongatapu and Eua. In Vava’u, for example, communications will be restored within this week, and on Ha’apai Island, work still needs to be done to return to normal by reactivating the home network.
“It will take six to nine months“admits Tonga Cable CEO James Panuve. Why?”We don’t have enough cables“.
Credits images: Digicel
