Tonga's fibre optic submarine cable is cut in two places —  between Nuku’alofa and Fiji, and Nuku‘alofa and Vava‘u, according to ‘Etuini Liava‘a, the Chief Executive Officer for Tonga Cable Ltd.

‘Etuini said that they confirmed on Thursday that the cables were cut 11.34km from Tongatapu at 23 meters deep on the internet cable that connects Tonga to Fiji, and at 7.7km from Tongatapu at 17 meters deep on the internet cable that connects Tongatapu to Vava’u. 

The cable cuts occurred in relatively shallow offshore water and not in the very deep ocean. But because there were two cuts on different cables there was speculation that they could have been caused either by a ship anchor dragging along the seabed or an earth tremor on the seabed.

‘Etuini said that a cable maintenance ship is expected to arrived in Tonga from Samoa during the weekend. They were processing permits for the ship and its crew to enter and work in Tonga’s waters on Sunday.

Theories

Meanwhile, Tongan network providers are scrambling to use any available satellite services that they can find, and are currently depending on EziNET, a local startup Network provider that uses Kacific Satellite.

Ian Nugent, a consultant engineer for Kacific, flew in from Sydney early this week on three hours notice to help EziNET provide more satellite capacity for Tonga.

He said they will not know what actually caused the two cuts in the cables until the cable ship investigates next week. He said the cables were laid close to each other near Tongatapu. It was possible that a trawler dragging an anchor for a long distance might have accidentally ripped up and cut both cables. Another theory was that the cables were bitten by sharks – he reckoned that if electricity was leaking from the cables then sharks might be attracted to bite them, but no one knows for sure at the moment.

There are about 40 fibre optic submarine cables world-wide and a handful of cable repair ships stationed in various places to service them. The nearest ship to Tonga was stationed in Samoa.