From Matangi Tonga Magazine, Vol. 15, no. 4, January 2001.

The wish of the Tonga government to have one body to run Tonga’s overseas and national telecommunication services, comes true in February when the Tonga Communications Corporation will be formally established.

Busby Kautoke, the Acting General Manager of the Tonga Telecommunications Commission, said that from February the Corporation would take over the domestic service that had been carried out by the Tonga Telecom, and the international service, which had been operated by the Tonga Telecommunications International Ltd.

The latter was a company established by government to take over the running of the international service from Cable and Wirless plc when its Franchise Agreement expired at the end of June 1999.

It was originally envisaged that the Corporation would take over the running of the domestic and the international service at the beginning of July 1999, but there was a delay, and the Tonga Communications Corporation Bill, was not passed by the parliament until October 2000.

Executives of the new Corporation include: general manager, Jon Morris; deputy general manager Busby Kautoke; manager accounting, Gladys Fukofuka; manager commercial, Taiatu Cocker; manager engineering, Timote Katoanga; and administration, Hon. Luani.

Busby said their immediate concern was to increase the number of telephone subscribers from 10,000 to 15,000, which he thought could be achieved within two or three years. As early as February they would introduce a new mobile cellular telephone service, which was expected to attract 2000 subscribers during the first 18 months, “it will enable people to check and send e-mails but it will not have a full multi-media capability.”

Busby said they would also look at increasing the satellite capacity for Vava‘u for full access to internet services. Constraints in providing internet services to the outer islands were due to the very few subscribers. “Last year there were only two subscribers, one each from Niuatoputapu and Niuafo‘ou, making it uneconomical for us to expand our satellite capabilities to those islands.”