A Tonga College, Atele, student connects to the internet at Tonga's ITC  Day event. 17 May 2013.

Tonga's upcoming high speed broadband capacity was the focus in Nuku'alofa this morning, May 17, when the Prime Minister Lord Tu'ivakano opened the Tonga National Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Day at the Queen Memorial Hall in Nuku'alofa. Matangi Tonga Online is working at a booth in the Hall and as you, our readers, are looking at this webpage your location is showing up as a bright dot on a world map.

Hundreds of school students are expected to visit the one-day ICT displays today.

Matangi Tonga Online is working at a booth in the Hall and through a live feed from Google Analytics, when you are reading any page on our website your home city will light up on our computer monitors.

Since Matangi Tonga started using analytics in February last year we can see that Tonga's leading news website has logged over 1.13 million visits from people living in 7,487 cities in over 200 countries worldwide. "This includes over  quarter of a million unique visitors, and 23 per cent of those were new visitors," said Mary Lyn Fonua, Managing Editor. 

The Matangi Tonga stand shows charts with daily visits ranging between 2,000 and 4,000 visits with a recent high point on May 10 for the news article on the birth of Tonga's new baby Prince Taufa'ahau Manumataongo.

The internet connection at Queen Salote Memorial Hall is provided by courtesy of both Tonga Telecommunications Corporation and Digicel Tonga.

Hon. Frederica Tuita, guest of honour at the ICT Day, Nuku'alofa, 17 May 2013.

Higher speed at lower cost

In opening the displays this morning Lord Tu'ivakano welcomed the lower cost and high speed that Tonga's new fibre optic cable will bring. "We are creating a knowledge-based society and it will help to accelerate the development of our society with internet at affordable prices," he said. He expected that the reductions in price of internet connections with the new cable might be around 40 percent.

During the opening ceremony a live Skype video-conference connection was made with Princess Angelika Latufuipeka, Tonga's High Commissioner to Australia.

Tonga's fibre optic cable is expected to arrive in June 2013 and high-speed internet services to be launched in July, under the first phase of the Pacific Regional Connectivity Project supported by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

An 826km submarine fiber optic cable linking Tonga to Fiji will help increase broadband internet access and affordability for Tonga’s population of 100,000 people. The Submarine Cable System will link Nuku'alofa with Suva, Fiji. A landing station at Sopu in Tonga will be connected to the existing SCCN landing station in Suva.  The Southern Cross Cable connects Fiji with Australia and Hawaii.

The Pacific Regional Connectivity Project is being funded through grants of US $34 million, including $17.2 million from the World Bank, $9.7 million from ADB and a $6.6 million investment from Tonga Communications Corporation.