Results for Business

A local company, Air Terminal Services (Tonga) Ltd. this month achieved its ground safety registration with IATA – becoming one of only two ground handlers in the Pacific islands to meet the standards required by the international aviation association. ATS (Tonga) holds ground handling contracts with all international carriers into Tonga.

Crown Prince Tupouto’a ‘Ulukalala launched a new Cool Storage and Solar Powered Facility for farm produce located at Nishi Trading, ‘Utulau, Tongatapu, today. The facility will help farmers store their products at controlled temperatures while awaiting shipment.

The Pacific Island Forum (PIF), in response to rising regional concerns over the cultural misappropriation of Pacific Kava by non-Pacific people, launched the ‘Kava Strategy’ during the 53rd PIFLM in Tonga.

The prices of yam, taro, cassava, and other agricultural crops, are significantly high this year due to the shortage of local supply, and this is an impact of climate change, said the Minister for Agriculture, Food, and Forest, Lord Fohe, on the opening of the one-day Tongatapu Royal Agriculture, Fisheries, Tourism and Trade Show 2024 today. HRH Crown Prince Tupouto’a ‘Ulukalala officially opened the show this afternoon, 24 August

Cable Ship Lodbrog found the northern end of Tonga's damaged fibre optic cable yesterday, 11 August, and is currently attempting to locate the southern end attached to Tongatapu. The repair of the submarine domestic telecommunications cable is hoped to be completed this Friday, 16 August.

Alcatel's cable ship CS Lodbrog is set to arrive in Tonga on Tuesday, 6 August, after a delay in Fiji for over a week, due to an issue with its right hand propeller.

Starlink has been granted a “provisional temporary permit” to operate in Tonga, MEIDECC announced today, 19 July. This was in response to a “significant amount” of public concern after the Tonga government instructed Starlink to cease its services in Tonga, stated MEIDECC CEO Sione 'Aka'oula.

Last Tuesday 9 July, Tonga's communications Regulator, MEIDECC, notified Starlink, the global satellite internet network, to cut off all services to its roaming subscribers across Tonga's land and seas. The government will not allow the use of Starlink in the current ongoing communications crisis in Tonga, because they have not given Starlink's fixed broadband services a license to operate here. The regulator is not allowing the roaming services either, after the nation's domestic fiber optic cable failed on 29 June. “With understanding of the inconvenience, at the same time the law cannot be put aside just because you have slow internet,” the Prime Minister told Starlink users yesterday, many of whom had raised safety concerns.

A total communications failure on Tonga's only inter-island domestic submarine cable has disrupted normal telephone and internet services to the outer islands since 29 June and it is likely to be several weeks before it is known how long it might take for normal services to be restored. In the meantime, the local providers are running on low bandwidth satellite links with limited capacity. It is Tonga's third major internet outage, following the severely disruptive national and domestic cable blackouts in 2019 and 2022.