The Pacific island of Tonga is set to get a second subsea cable connection after the governments of Australia and New Zealand agreed to construct a new cable connecting it to the Hawaiki Cable.
According to a joint statement from both governments on Thursday, the 383-kilometre Tonga Hawaiki Branch System will provide a link between the Hawaiki Cable and a landing station in Vava’u. A survey of the route to identify the most efficient and resilient cable lay route has already been conducted.
Digital infrastructure operator BW Digital will work with Tonga Cable Limited to oversee project delivery and assist in increasing local knowledge and capacity to support service delivery and maintenance into the future, the statement said.
The 15,000 km Hawaiki Cable went live in 2018 with an initial design capacity of 30 Tbps. It links Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii and Oregon on the US West Coast, with branching units for American Samoa and New Caledonia.
“The Tonga Hawaiki Branch System will connect Tonga to Auckland and Hawaii in a few milliseconds and empower the development of Tonga’s digital economy,” said Prime Minister Hu’akavameiliku in a statement.
The Tonga Hawaiki Branch System will be Tonga’s first direct link to a major transpacific cable system. Currently, its only source of terrestrial-subsea capacity is the Tonga Cable – owned by Digicel Tonga, Government of Tonga and Tonga Communications Corporation – that connects to Fiji. The island’s vulnerability to internet disruptions was graphically illustrated in January 2022, when that link was damaged by the eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano.
The Australia/New Zealand statement noted that the new Hawaiki branch is a response to that incident. The Australian government said it provided financing for immediate repairs, followed by a A$2 million investment in 2023 to permanently repair the domestic cable. It also co-funded a feasibility study with New Zealand “to provide a comprehensive assessment of international cable redundancy options to the Government of Tonga.”
Australian High Commissioner to Tonga, Brek Batley, said the Tonga Hawaiki Branch project is “part of Australia’s broader investment in secure and resilient telecommunications infrastructure across the region, including through the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific.”
New Zealand High Commissioner to Tonga, Matthew Howell, said the project will “support resilience and connectivity and be an important enabler for economic growth.”
The new Tonga branch is expected to be in place by late 2025. Apart from giving Tonga a redundant international connection, it will also add sorely needed internet capacity. According to the Broadband Speedchecker website, the average downlink speed in Tonga is 3.5 Mbps, with Digicel Tonga at the top range with 8.59 Mbps.
Some people have been illegally importing equipment from LEO satellite operator Starlink into Tonga as a workaround. The Tonga government is currently considering whether to grant LEO satellite operator Starlink a licence to operate legally on the island.
