There was no telephone or internet communication between Tonga and the rest of the world for about 26 hours, from 12.30pm on Saturday, January 15 until 3 am today, January 17.

The technical manager of Tonfön, John Kornele, said that they lost communication with the Intelsat Satellite, which links Tonga to the hub of their service in Los Angeles, USA.

He said that the exact cause of the black-out had yet to be made public, but by 3 pm on Saturday, Intelsat made it known to its customers that the satellite has "stopped talking" and that Tonfön had to load their carrier to another Intelsat satellite.

Justin Kaitapu, Tonfön's IT man, said it had taken them 26 hours to get their service back in the air. The satellite black-out knocked out the internet and the international telephone service of Tonfön, but the television was still in operation. Justin said that luckily they recently shifted the television from Intelsat and linked to another satellite.

The Intelsat satellite black-out also knocked out the internet service and the international telephone service of the Tonga Communication Corporation (TCC) and according to their head technician their service will not be back on air until sometime tomorrow.

Also affected are the booking services of all international air lines, in Tonga, Air New Zealand, Polynesian Airlines and Air Pacific.

The director of Tonga's Civil Aviation, Viliami Ma'ake said that no international air service has been cancelled, but international telephone communication has been disrupted and they had to revert to using HF Radio.

With banking the EFTPOS system of the ANZ was knocked out, and the ATM of machine of Westpac Bank of Tonga could read only local cards.