Transcript
GIFF JOHNSON: After 23 days with basically very little access to internet, cable repairs were completed. It was turned back on and the explosion of Marshall Islanders appearing on Facebook was evidence that the internet is back on and live for most people in the Marshall Islands."
JO O'BRIEN: So has it been a bit of a hardship for people having that lack of internet connection?
GJ: The biggest problem has been for businesses, because they went to satelites in the meantime while the cable was being repaired and that put us down to about 3 percent of the normal bandwidth so we just there was nothing, so internet time was rationed. Businesses or government offices got it on an as needed basis for maybe two hour slots or three hour slots and then you were off and email generally was accessible but couldn't get on the web, couldn't go to websites, and this affected ordering, vendors, payments, there were a lot of issues early on. But then Telecom bought some extra satellite bandwidth and that helped to get more people on and at least email was then accessible. I mean of course you've got people who are used to being on Facebook and communicating that way or Netflix and YouTube and all of these streaming sites and those were just turned off essentially during this cable downtime because there was no bandwidth for people to access them.
JOB: Do we know how the submarine cable was damaged and if this repair job is permanent, there's not going to be any more problems?
GF: I don't have details on that, there really has been no detailed information offered about it. They said it's done. This was the first time there was a repair needed on the cable since it was installed in 2009.
JOB: So it's been pretty reliable up until this point?
GF: And I don't know that there was any impact on telecommunication services before they did the repair but technicians had identified what they called a power anomaly within the cable near Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands and decided that they needed to be proactive and repair rather than let it sit and then while they were doing the repairs there was a second repair that ended up happening which was to the armour around the cable on the oceanside at Kwajalein, right off the atoll, so that was a second thing that went on and presumably is part of the reason while completion was delayed a bit beyond what was initially thought.
