Company threatens to cut Northern Marianas cable

Wed May 2 03:39:24 UTC 2018

------ sean at donelan.com wrote: --------
From: Sean Donelan <sean at donelan.com>

In 2015, the only submarine cable connecting the Northern 
Marianas Islands, a U.S. Territory, was damaged by a 
boulder.  It cut off all telecommunications to the U.S. 
Territory for several weeks. To obtain a second cable for 
the islands, the CNMI government signed an agreement to 
subsidize a second fiber optic cable.

<snip>
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Note that's the second cable; for redundancy.

http://www.pireport.org/articles/2016/11/03/saipans-sugar-dock-beaches-be-closed-during-undersea-cable-installation

"Last year, the severance of IT&E’s fiber optic cable—the 
CNMI’s lone undersea cable—effectively disconnected the 
islands from the rest of the world as Internet and phone 
lines went down and put commerce at a standstill."

"Docomo Pacific, owned by NTT Docomo Inc. of Japan, 
decided to place its own fiber optic cable along the main 
islands of Saipan, Rota and Tinian."

“Should there be a natural phenomenon, we don’t want to 
have all our eggs in the same basket. Having that 
separation would minimize that risk. We were also looking 
to create as much separation to existing cables as 
possible,”

That they didn't have much satellite backup is surprising 
to say the least.  Especially with O3B and others soon
coming up. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O3b_%28satellite%29

"The O3b constellation began offering service in March 
2014"

scott

--- sean at donelan.com wrote:
From: Sean Donelan <sean at donelan.com>

In 2015, the only submarine cable connecting the Northern Marianas 
Islands, a U.S. Territory, was damaged by a boulder.  It cut off all 
telecommunications to the U.S. Territory for several weeks. To obtain a 
second cable for the islands, the CNMI government signed an agreement to 
subsidize a second fiber optic cable.

Apparently there is now a dispute about the subsidy.

https://www.radionz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/356123/company-threatens-to-cut-northern-marianas-cable

A telecommunications company in the Northern Marianas is threatening to 
cut the fibre optic cable that connects Tinian and Rota to Saipan if the 
government fails to provide $US1.3 million it promised to pay for the 
service.

Under a memorandum of agreement signed with the CNMI government in 2016, 
Docomo Pacific agreed to include Tinian and Rota in connecting their fibre 
optic cable 'ATISA' at a fee of $US650,000 per island.

Earlier this week, the House of Representative included the $US1.3 million 
commitment to the telco in the $US15 million appropriations bill that also 
gave $US7 million to the CNMI Judiciary to fix its mould and 
air-conditioning problems.

The legislation still needs to be passed by the senate and supported by 
the governor.