Taro, Solomon Islands

Taro, Solomon Islands: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Taro is a landing point in the Solomon Islands, an island nation in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. As a coastal settlement capable of receiving submarine cable infrastructure, Taro forms part of the Solomon Islands' international connectivity framework. One submarine cable lands at Taro, linking it directly into a regional network that spans across Oceania and connects the Solomon Islands with neighbouring Pacific nations.

The single cable serving Taro is the Coral Sea Cable System (CS²), a significant regional system that ties the Solomon Islands to both Australia and Papua New Guinea. Through this connection, Taro participates in a corridor that bridges the southwestern Pacific with Australia, enabling both inter-island and intercontinental data flows across the region.

Cables Landing at Taro

The Coral Sea Cable System (CS²) is the sole submarine cable landing at Taro. The system spans approximately 4,700 kilometres and reached ready-for-service (RFS) status in 2020, making it part of the first generation of submarine cable infrastructure to serve the Solomon Islands. In addition to Taro, the CS² connects landing points in Australia and Papua New Guinea, as well as other points within the Solomon Islands itself, forming a multi-country regional network across the southwestern Pacific.

Regional Context

Within the Solomon Islands, submarine cable connectivity is distributed across four landing points: Honiara, Auki, Noro, and Taro. Honiara is the most connected of these, served by two cables, while Auki, Noro, and Taro each host a single cable. Taro ranks among the upper tier of Solomon Islands landing points by cable count, sharing that position with Auki and Noro, though Honiara remains the dominant hub in the national submarine cable landscape.

Network Role

Taro functions as a single-cable terminus on the Coral Sea Cable System, receiving the CS² as its sole international submarine connection. This places it at one node of a multi-country system that links the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, and Australia, extending the reach of the CS² beyond the capital and into a secondary settlement. The 2020 RFS date of the CS² means Taro's international submarine cable access is relatively recent, dating only to the first year in which any submarine cable infrastructure became operational in the Solomon Islands.

As one of four landing points in the Solomon Islands receiving submarine cable connectivity, Taro contributes to a geographically distributed national network. Its presence in the regional submarine cable graph reflects an effort to extend international connectivity beyond a single point of entry, spreading access across the island nation's diverse and dispersed geography.