Tonga Returns Online After 38-Day Cable Outage
Tonga regained full Internet connectivity early on February 22, 2022, after repairs to the undersea cable damaged by the January 14 volcanic eruption and subsequent tsunami. Cloudflare Radar data shows traffic levels returning to pre-eruption norms shortly after midnight UTC — around 13:00 local time — following 38 days of severely restricted connectivity.
Digicel, Tonga's main ISP, announced at 02:13 UTC that "data connectivity has been restored on the main island Tongatapu and Eua after undersea submarine cable repairs." The repair ship Reliance spent 20 days replacing a 92 km (57 mile) section of the 827 km submarine fiber optic cable connecting Tonga to Fiji and international networks. According to Digicel, the cable sustained "multiple faults and breaks due to the volcanic eruption."
James Panuve, chief executive of Tonga Cable, told Reuters that residents on the main island "will have access almost immediately," which Radar confirmed with a sustained spike in traffic. The residual traffic observed in the days immediately following January 15 came from satellite services that some businesses used with difficulty.
Recovery Not Complete for Outer Islands
While the main island is back online, the undersea work is not finished. Panuve noted that repairs to the domestic cable connecting Tongatapu with outlying islands — the areas hardest hit by the tsunami — could take six to nine months more. Of Tonga's 105,000 residents, about 70% live on Tongatapu and 5% (roughly 5,000) on Eua, which has also been reconnected. The remaining inhabitants across the archipelago's 36 inhabited islands face a longer wait for normal Internet service.
During the repair effort, telecommunication companies from neighboring Pacific islands, particularly New Caledonia, supplied lengths of cable when Tonga ran out, Panuve said.
A Reminder of Submarine Cable Dependence
The outage underscores how much global Internet traffic depends on submarine cable infrastructure. The first communications cables carrying telegraphy date to the 1850s; today, 428 active submarine cables — with 36 more planned — span approximately 1.3 million km around the globe. Antarctica remains the only continent without submarine telecommunications cable access.
Submarine Internet is generally highly reliable, particularly when redundant paths exist to reroute around cable breaks. Tonga's situation was different: its single 827 km cable links only Fiji to the Tonga archipelago, and Fiji itself connects to the main Southern Cross Cable — leaving no alternate route when the Tongan segment failed.
The 38-day outage illustrates how a single cable failure can isolate an entire nation when no fallback path exists, and how complex repair operations — involving specialized ships, replacement cable sections, and international coordination — are the only recourse in such scenarios.
