Huawei has secured a contract to build the first subsea cable to the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific.
The government-owned Solomon Island Submarine Cable Company (SISCC) has commissioned Huawei to build a cable linking Sydney Australia with Solomon Islands capital Honiara.
The cable will have a further connection from Honiara to Auki and Noro, providing connectivity to three of the six major islands in the nation.
Due to its geographic location the Solomon Islands has long been dependent on satellites for telecommunications, which have proven unable to provide sufficient bandwidth for the country. The government founded the SISCC last year to address this issue.
Huawei said the company and subsea cable subsidiary Huawei Marine Networks will design and build a 4,000km cable network with a total capacity of 2.5Tbps for the Sydney-Honiara link.
“We’ve been planning this submarine cable for nearly seven years. Thanks to our partners Huawei Marine and Huawei Technologies for providing solutions to make it possible,” SISCC CEO Keir Preedy said.
“I believe the completion of this cable will solve problems we are facing now -insufficient bandwidth, high cost, and unstable services. It will provide high-quality telecommunication services to carriers in South Pacific region, and more importantly, it will deliver high-speed internet and telecommunication services in Solomon Islands.”