The Chairman of Shoreline Communication Ltd., Crown Prince Tupouto'a, this morning, August 23, signed a multi million dollar supply and build contract with Huawei Technologies of China.

Huawei Technologies, a high-tech enterprise which specializes in research and development, production and the marketing of communications equipment, was awarded the contract by Shoreline Communication Ltd. for the upgrading and the expanding of its Tonfön wireless telephone network.

Liu Guo Yong, who signed the contract on behalf of Huawei Technologies, and the Manager of the Mobile Communication Technical Support Department, said that the project implementation will start in November and it is expected to be completed by December 25.

"The new network will provide a perfect coverage and will bring reliable, rich valued services such as fax, data, PABX, broadcasting short message, voice mailbox amongst other things to serve 50,000 subscribers," he said.

The CEO of the Shoreline Group of Companies, Soane Ramanlal, said that the upgraded Tonfön telephone network, "will continue to maintain the low user rates but it will increase dramatically the reliability of services and coverage in Tongatapu, Vava'u, Ha'apai and enable extension of services to the Niuas."

Crown Prince Tupouto'a at the contract signing ceremony recalled a particular pleasure that he had when he witnessed the drop in telephone rates in Tonga by 75%, "in a single day when Tonfön opened for business in 2002.

"The subsequent dramatic increase in international and domestic traffic which followed was remarkable and eventually benefited the Tongan people greatly by providing GSM services at an affordable price in areas hitherto deemed uneconomic by the conventional telecommunication expertise but made possible by the abundant advances in Voice over Internet Protocol and TCP/IP compression."

Crown Prince Tupouto'a said that the expansion programme of the Tonfön phone network would increase its capability to five times its present size.

See also: China looks at investment opportunities in Tonga [2]