A scientist from the Tonga Geological Services watches the eruption of the volcano from a boat. Photo: Facebook / Tonga Geological Services
The Southern Cross Cable cut during the volcanic eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai and subsequent tsunami last month has been finally repaired.
Tonga Cable Limited chair Samuiela Fonua confirmed that the cable was restored and handed over to his company just before midday today.
He said he was very pleased to get the restored cable which resumes Tonga’s phone and internet fully today after they had limited internet for a month.
“We just had a long meeting with the cable repair team, we are preparing a presentation to the Prime Minster of Tonga tomorrow,” he said.
“It is all done now, the cable was handed over to us this morning just before noon, now it’s with the ISPs (Internet Service Providers).”
The cable repair ship Reliance took 20-days to repair the fibre-optic cable and finally handed it over after 24-hours of testing yesterday.
The cable maintenance ship Reliance Photo: vesselfinder.com
It has been a long journey for the Reliance which started out with a re-fit in Singapore at the time of the eruption, then it travelled to Papua New Guinea where the crew were picked up and vaccinated.
Then it sailed to Samoa where it has a base and picked up some spare cable before sailing to Tonga which took a day-and-a-half where it went to work on repairing the cable.
The ship never docked in Tonga and had a full medical team onboard in the event of a Covid-19 outbreak.
Fonua said he would not know the full costs of the repair until Tonga Cable Limited received the invoice from the United States cable company Subcom.
“We won’t know the full cost of the repairs until we get an invoice from the company (Subcom), but I estimate it will cost at least a $US1 million,” he said.
People reported the internet connection was restored in Tonga finally today and the world was able to communicate with Tonga once again.
Source: RNZ
