SUVA, Feb. 4 (Xinhua) -- A temporary ground station will be set up in Fiji to provide internet gateway for Tonga, which has no internet services after the violent eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano and ensuing tsunami last month.
Fiji's Acting Prime Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum confirmed on Friday that a team of engineers from the U.S. private space company SpaceX were in Fiji.
Sayed-Khaiyum, also Fiji's minister of communications, said the engineers would establish and operate a temporary ground station in Fiji to provide an internet gateway for Tonga for six months.
"Space X had applied for a temporary emergency telecommunications license ... SpaceX and Fiji International Telecommunications Pte Limited are currently, however, in commercial negotiations to co-locate the earth station and connect to Fiji's internet gateway," he said.
The violent eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano, about 65 km north of Tonga's capital city of Nuku'alofa, has damaged the undersea fiber-optic cable, leaving Tonga without reliable internet connectivity.
Meanwhile, according to Tonga's news website Matangi Tonga Online, James Panuve, CEO of Tonga Cable Ltd., said on Friday that Tonga's broken submarine telecommunications cable was not where it was supposed to be.
A search on Thursday night by an ROV (remotely operated vehicle) from the cable repair ship Reliance could not locate the break, after it arrived in the area on Thursday, Panuve said.
They had been trying to locate where the cable break was, while it appeared that the shockwaves or tsunami waves pushed the cable away, he said.
The international cable lies about 44 km south of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano, he said, adding that Tonga's domestic cable is about 7-8 km east of the volcano, but the break is about 22 km southeast of the volcano.
He said the estimated time to fix international cable was one week, but it could be longer or shorter because it really depended on the extent of the damage once they located the cable break.
For Tonga's domestic cable, they would need another week to check it out, he added. ■
