Solomon Islands see the light (almost)

Computerworld reported today that the undersea fibre cable that will connect Australia, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands together has been installed at the landing site in the nation’s capital, Honiara.

The 4,700km four fibre pair will eventually connect Honiara, Port Moresby and Sydney to bandwidth that will revolutionise industries in both island nations.

The fibre cable will deliver capacity of at least 20 Terabits per second to each capital, with a total capacity of 40Tbps for the system.

Vocus Communications, the primary contractor for the project, is expected to deliver the project by December 2019.  It has contracted with Alcatel Submarine Networks, owned by Nokia, to complete the bulk of the submarine cable laying.

Vocus is also rolling out a national fibre network for the Solomon Islands and laying cable to connect some of the outlying islands.

The fibre project will make a massive difference to the lives of people in the Solomons and PNG.  Currently, only satellite communications can deliver significant bandwidth and it comes at a high cost.  Fibre’s comparatively low cost will mean more business and households can be connected, revolutionising commerce.

Of course, it means that the Solomon islands and PNG will also get to enjoy(?) Netflix in their lives as well!

For our part, we’re looking forward to delivering new IT services to our existing clients in the Solomons and we’re excited about the work we’ll be delivering for new clients in the next few years.