wiredinUSA October 2019

Image: ASN

Coral Sea connections

The 4,700km Coral Sea cable, from Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, has landed in Australia and will be ready for service in December. Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) laid the cable from Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea (PNG), and Honiara, Solomon Islands, to Sydney’s Tamarama Beach, using its Île-de-Bréhat cable ship. The Île- de-Bréhat then returned to the Solomon Islands to lay a separate 730km cable linking Honiara to the provincial centers of Auki, Noro and Taro. Australia’s foreign minister, said the Coral Sea Cable System (CSCS) will provide PNG and the Solomon Islands with “faster, more reliable and affordable Internet, Senator Marise Payne,

delivering capacity to communications, commerce and government service delivery.” The cable, mainly funded by Australia’s aid program, has four fiber-pairs to deliver 20Tbps to PNG and a further 20Tbps to the Solomon Islands. Once complete, PNG and Solomon Islands will majority own the cable and receive the generated revenue. The new cable “will significantly augment Papua New Guinea’s existing submarine cable capacity,” said a spokesman for CSCS. The Solomon Islands currently relies on satellite for international voice and data communications, with only 11% of the population of PNG and the Solomon Islands having any access to the Internet. transformative

35

wiredInUSA October 2019