As part of the Fijian government’s commitment to make high-speed internet services available on Vanua Levu, Fiji’s second largest island, Swedish internet infrastructure specialist Flexenclosure has been commissioned for the construction of an eCentre cable landing station in Savusavu.
The cable will connect to the Tui-Samoa subsea cable, providing a high-capacity and high-availability fiber-optic link between Viti Levu, Fiji’s main island, and Vanua Levu.
This Fijian government initiative is expected to be a big boost to the local economy and provide more jobs and opportunities for job creation in the ICT sector, along with greater telecommunications security between the two main islands to ensure uninterrupted emergency communications during severe weather events.
It is estimated that Vanua Levu will have full access to high-speed internet services within the first half of this year.
“The construction of this eCentre is a major step forward in our campaign to bring all Fijians, regardless of geography, into the fold to meet the demands of a dynamic 21st century economy,” said Fiji's Attorney-General, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum.
“This project will bring the level of services available on Vanua Levu on par with what can be found on our main island, Viti Levu, bringing enormous benefits for local businesses and opportunities for jobs in ICT, making the entire region riper for investment..”
This order from Fiji follows three cable landing station wins for Flexenclosure in 2017 – one with BSCC in Palau and two with SSCC in Samoa. The new facilities will be instrumental in increasing the availability and reducing the cost of internet services to these remote island nations.
“We are honored to be supporting the Fijian Government in their ongoing digital transformation of the country”, Flexenclosure CEO David King said. “We are fully committed to the Pacific region, and following our deployments in Palau and Samoa this Fijian project confirms our status as a major force in the Pacific cable landing station market.”
Flexenclosure is a specialist designer and manufacturer of prefabricated eCentre cable landing stations specifically for the submarine cable industry. They can be built to accommodate permanent staff or to be unmanned 24x7 facilities. And with eCentre’s modular construction, the facilities can easily be expanded to accommodate additional equipment as data traffic grows, all without interrupting on-going operations.
The company has pioneered the deployment of prefabricated data center technology into developing nations in Africa, Latin America and Asia, and is expanding in the Pacific region with its cable landing station projects and a major data center initiative recently announced with Virtutel in Australia.
First published in Enterprise Innovation