------ sean@donelan.com wrote: -------- From: Sean Donelan <sean@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> -------------------------------------------------------- Note that's the second cable; for redundancy. http://www.pireport.org/articles/2016/11/03/saipans-sugar-dock-beaches-be-cl... "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@donelan.com wrote: From: Sean Donelan <sean@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-threaten... 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.