A volcanic eruption in the South Pacific Ocean in January 2022 caused a tsunami and damaged an undersea fiber-optic telecommunication cable that connects Tonga, a Polynesian archipelago, to the rest of the world. The internet is kind of like drinking water, says UC Berkeley Professor Nicole. Tonga Cable System is a submarine fiber-optic cable system connecting Tonga with Fiji, where it connects to other international networks. It is 827 kilometres (514 mi) long and was activated in 2013. It has cable landing points at Sopu, a suburb of Nukuʻalofa in Tonga, and Suva, Fiji. Resilience, the United States cable company SubCom's cable repair ship, that fixed Tonga's internet cables cut from the 2022 Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai volcanic eruption. The residents of Vava'u and Ha'apai will continue experiencing phone and internet outages caused by the damaged submarine. Before August 2013, Tonga had no submarine cable. A nation of 100,000 people spread across 170 islands in the South Pacific depended entirely on Intelsat satellite links for all international communications. Internet was measured in single-digit megabits for the entire country. Tonga lost all internet access.
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