By Eleanor Gee

While Tonga Cable works on the breakdown of its submarine fibre optic cable that connects Tonga’s internet to the world, many businesses in Tonga are struggling to keep their operations functioning.

Heavily dependent on the internet, Tonga's tourism industry is hard hit and that includes airline bookings in Tonga, which have been disrupted since the fibre optic cable went down on Sunday night.

Kingdom Travel, a travel consultant business that relies on internet access to function has made drastic changes to its operations since the internet blackout on Sunday night.

“It’s not fun at all for us. It’s very stressful,” Melenaite Veikune, Acting Manager at Kingdom Travel told Matangi Tonga.

Airline bookings have to be made online and the only way that can be done from Tonga at the moment is directly from the location of the only satellite Network Operator in town, EziNET Ltd. (Pacific Finance & Investments). Melenaite said that she has moved two staff members over to the EziNET office to be able to connect to the internet to make airline bookings for her customers. Meanwhile, cargo staff were currently using the Digicel office for internet access.

She said they are taking travel bookings over the telephone and recording customer information, which is relayed to her staff based at the Transam Office to upload into Kingdom Travel's booking system.

“Only people who pay cash can make bookings at the moment, not credit cards users. They have to go to the bank and try and withdraw cash.”

She added they will use a USB flash drive to save electronic tickets at the internet base and take it to their office for printing and distribution.

She is hopeful their service provider, Digicel, has them on a priority list to connect their office to the internet but in the meantime, they are doing what they can with the current internet access.

“It’s very slow but at least if we can get one computer up and running we will be able to help our passengers out. We’ve been very busy this morning with people calling in wanting to know this and that but we can’t fully provide the service at all,” she said on Wednesday.

Besides the travel booking system, Melenaite said they also can’t use their online MYOB accounting system which means the longer the cable blackout continues the bigger the backlog of work becomes.

“We can’t access the MYOB so there will be a heap of workload that will come when we have our internet [reconnected]!”

Digicel Tonga

One of Tonga's Network operators and ISP provider Digicel Tonga is tunneling its services through the same satellite connection. They operate internet, mobile phones, and television services which are all impacted by the cable blackout.

Digicel Tonga CEO, Francis Thomsen said their key priority was to work on critical services such as international connections, and ensure their key customers were connected to keep the economy moving. Progress is being made.

“Since Monday night, we managed to open up the international. So, we’re able to call overseas and receive calls,” he said.

“And following that, our focus is to make sure the economy ticks. So, we managed to get the Reserve Bank up and running.

“And on top of that the airlines, so as to allow travel, and then the Western Union for people to get hold of cash.”

He said that all their key corporate business customers were invited to their office to give them connectivity so “it does not disrupt their businesses and the economy”.

“And then slowly work our way in terms of opening up data so that people can get Facebook.”

He said that while “Facebook is not a priority at the moment” people can now contact their families overseas by calling them.

Ha‘apai and Vava‘u are still running and “up to now, our outer island calls were never affected.”

With Digicel Tonga being a shareholder of Tonga Cable Ltd., he said it will probably take a week and a half to fix the internet issue, “but it will depend on how fast things can be done”.

He added that their backup internet plan in the meantime is access through the satellite offered by EziNet (Dateline Transam Office) as there is no fibre optic cable backup for Tonga.