Amidst the increase in natural disasters in the Pacific Region, Digicel Pacific and SES have announced an agreement to bolster Digicel Pacific’s network with SES's service to enable critical communications to be restored quickly in the event of natural disasters. This agreement is an extension of the companies' long-standing partnership.

Following the earthquake that hit Tonga on August 26th, Tonga Domestic Cable Extension (TDCE), the island nation’s only domestic subsea cable connection, was damaged. Through SES’s satellite service, Digicel Pacific was able to restore inter-island voice, SMS, and data services on the islands of Vava’u within 6 hours.

Digicel Pacific Regional HUB Markets CEO, Shally Jannif said, “The expanded agreement with SES and the use of its O3b mPOWER network will give the nation of Tonga greater peace of mind that in the event of a significant disaster, we will have the ability to access a large amount of low-latency, high-throughput connectivity. Being able to implement disaster recovery networks quickly after the recent earthquake enabled people to get back online and assure their loved ones of their safety. At the same time, it also enabled local business to get their operations back up quickly, minimising the potential disruption to their businesses.”

John Turnbull, Director, Sales, Enterprise & Cloud, Pacific at SES said, "When natural disasters occur, it is of upmost importance to restore communications in a matter of hours. This extended collaboration using SES’s service will enable Digicel Pacific to provide enhanced resilience with large bandwidth and low-latency connectivity flexibly and quickly."