The Coral Sea Cable System (CS2)
The Coral Sea Cable System links both PNG and Solomon Islands back to the major East Coast Internet Hub at Sydney. Each country uses two fibre pairs on the system from their respective capitals, Port Moresby and Honiara to Sydney, giving each country up to 20 Terabits/s in capacity.
The Sydney Landing party is Telstra. The system is installed in their Paddington Exchange in Sydney. The submarine cable lands at Tamarama Beach in Sydney’s Eastern suburbs and utilises Telstra land duct across Sydney to Paddington. The physical cable comprises a four fibre optic pair core sheathed in the one cable from Australia over 2500km to a Branching Unit in the Coral Sea, where the four pair core is then split into two cables each containing two fibre pair cores that make their way to Landing Stations in Port Moresby and Honiara.
The construction project was co-funded by the Governments of the Commonwealth of Australia, PNG and Solomon Islands under the terms of an MOU signed on 11th July 2011. Australia grant funded 66.7% of the total cost with the remainder being contributed by Solomon Islands and PNG.
Vocus Communications were the prime contractor under an Engineering, Procurement and Construction Contract (EPC) that was signed on June 18th 2018. Vocus Communications sub-contracted Alcatel Submarine Networks (France) to construct and install the cable system. The construction of the system was completed on 29th November 2019.
The CS2 cable is owned and operated by the Coral Sea Cable Company Pty Limited in Australia. This company is owned equally by The Commonwealth of Australia, SISCC and PNG DataCo. PNG DataCo and SISCC have each been granted Indefeasible Rights of Use (IRU) over two fibre pairs for the full lifetime of the Cable system (25 years) by The Coral Sea Cable Company.
The Solomon Islands Domestic Network (SIDN)
Four Provinces of the Solomon Islands are joined by the Solomon Islands Domestic submarine cable Network (SIDN). SIDN was constructed in parallel with the International Coral Sea Cable System. SIDN ensures that key Provincial Centres can benefit fully from the International cable system and it supports the advancement of domestic telecommunications in the Solomon Islands.
SIDN links Auki in Malaita Province, Noro in Western Province and Taro in Choiseul Province with Honiara. It is an unrepeated multi core fibre network with two branching units. The length of the longest segment from Honiara to Noro is 430km and is one of the longest unrepeated segments in the world. To achieve this distance ROPA amplifiers are installed approximately 100km along the cable from Honiara and Noro landing stations.
The system was 66.7% grant funded by The Commonwealth of Australia with the remaining 33.3% provided by the Solomon Islands Government through Solomon Islands Submarine Cable Company Limited (SISCC).
SISCC constructed all the landing party infrastructure required to install the cable system using local Solomon Islands contractors. The land infrastructure includes beach landings, land cable duct routes from the beach landings to landing station sites. Prefabricated Cable Landing Stations for the cable system electronics in each of the four locations was sourced from a specialist vendor in USA.
After commissioning in late 2019, the title of the Solomon Islands Domestic Network was transferred to SISCC. The system has an expected life of over 25 years.