Page 14 - IB July 2020

ICT ICT

Jiwaka Coffee communicates with growers and suppliers via the internet and the Kacific1 satellite; PNG DataCo lands the Kumul submarine cable in
Kavieng; and Huawei’s corporate mascot.
CONNECTING THE PACIFIC

PACIFIC ICT: PROMISE AND CHALLENGES

By Samantha Magick and last month Allcatel Submarine Networks was awarded a
$40.7 million contract to build and deploy a second submarine
For the past several months if you are working in business, cable, Gondwana 2 between Fiji and New Caledonia due for
in government, for regional organisations or studying, you completion in early 2022. (For a more complete description of
have almost certainly expanded your use of a raft of collabo- upcoming and existing cable networks, visit www.islandsbusi-
ration and meeting tools. You may have formed an opinion on ness.com)
Zoom vs Hangouts, logged into dozens of webinars, learnt the There are also high hopes for improved service via satellite
etiquette of virtual meetings, and digitalised processes that technology, such as the kind provided by Kacific, a satellite
were once paper-based. In the Pacific region, you’ve probably operator offering a high-speed broadband internet service in
also spent time grappling with meetings where the speakers the South East Asia and Pacific Islands regions. Late last month
can be likened to poorly-dubbed film actors, or the sound Tuvalu’s government signed a five-year bandwidth capacity
disintegrates into static. agreement with Kacific, and Federated States of Micronesia
A range of new submarine cables and improved satellite has issued an individual operating license for Kacific to pro-
choices promise to improve this situation within months in vide telecom services in the nation. (Read more on page 16 )
several Pacific Island countries.
At the start of the pandemic, sector experts were con- Mobile networks
cerned that the production of mobile devices and supply chain The other part of the ICT sector experiencing rapid change
changes might slow the progress towards 5G in some markets, is network provision. In the South Pacific, two major players
and that there might be issues keeping submarine cable in dominate; Digicel and ATH and its subsidiary companies.
service, deployed or upgraded. Digicel entered the Pacific market, initially in Samoa, in
However the companies responsible for cable being laid and 2006 and has since expanded operations to PNG, Fiji, Tonga,
tested in our region claim the impact has been negligible. Vanuatu and Nauru.
A number of cables criss-cross the Pacific seabed. Amongst However this year the Digicel Group was in financial strife,
the new ones coming online is the Manatua-One Polynesia racking up unsustainable debts. After declaring bankruptcy in
cable, which includes landings in French Polynesia, Cook May, Digicel Group has since reduced its debt by about $1.6
Islands, Niue and Samoa. Targeted to go live last month, it billion to US$5.4 billion, after winning support from its lend-
is in the final stages of testing. The Coral Sea Cable System ers.
connects Port Moresby and Honiara with Sydney and the rest While Digicel seems to have weathered the storm for now,
of the world. The Hawaiki Submarine Cable is owned by a the process did provide insights into its Pacific operations,
company of the same name, and connects users in Austra- even as the company downplayed the local impact. Documen-
lia, New Zealand, American Samoa, Hawaii, and the United tation filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission
States, with New Caledonia to be connected by the end of this revealed its market share (from more than 90% in PNG to 32%
year if it remains on schedule. The Southern Cross Next cable in Fiji, the only of its Pacific markets in which it doesn’t domi-
is due for commissioning in early 2022 , and will link Sydney, nate) amongst other details of the business.
Auckland and Los Angeles, with critical international cable Meanwhile Fiji’s Amalgamated Telecom Holdings (ATH) now
connectivity to Fiji, Tokelau and Kiribati. Palau is also looking operates in six Pacific Island markets after last year acquiring
towards installation of a second internet submarine cable, controlling interests in PNG’s Digitec Group and Bluesky. The

14 Islands Business, July 2020