Tonga: One Cable, One Volcano — How a Pacific Island Nation Lost Its Internet for 38 Days and What It Looks Like Now

The Traceroute

On April 5, 2026, we traced the route from Jerusalem and Tbilisi to Tonga Communications Corporation in Nuku'alofa. Both routes followed Cogent's backbone across three continents before handing off to Vodafone Samoa for the final Pacific Island hop.

Route: Tbilisi → Tonga (339ms)

Route: Jerusalem → Tonga (348ms)

The geography is striking: packets from the Middle East travel west through Marseille, then east to Singapore, south to Sydney, and finally northeast into the Pacific — a journey of roughly 30,000 km to reach an island 15,000 km away.

Before the Cable: Satellite Island

Before August 2013, Tonga had no submarine cable. A nation of 100,000 people spread across 170 islands in the South Pacific depended entirely on Intelsat satellite links for all international communications. Internet was measured in single-digit megabits for the entire country. A basic broadband connection cost more than most Tongans earned in a week.

The isolation was not just geographic — it was economic. Tonga's economy depends heavily on remittances from diaspora communities in New Zealand, Australia, and the United States. Without affordable internet, banking and money transfers relied on expensive satellite-linked services. International phone calls cost dollars per minute.

The Tonga Cable: $32 Million to Connect a Kingdom

In August 2013, the Tonga Cable went live — an 827 km submarine fiber-optic system connecting Nuku'alofa to Suva, Fiji. Built by Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks at a cost of approximately US$32.4 million, it was funded by the World Bank (IDA), the Asian Development Bank, and the Government of Tonga through the Pacific Regional Connectivity Program.

From Fiji, Tonga's traffic reaches the world via the Southern Cross Cable — an 18,000 km system connecting Sydney, Auckland, Fiji, and the US mainland. This is why our traceroute shows packets going through Sydney: there is no direct cable from Asia or Europe to Tonga. All traffic must transit through the Fiji-Australia corridor.

The cable's impact was immediate: wholesale bandwidth costs dropped by roughly 90%. Internet penetration began climbing from under 10% toward the current ~45-50% of the population. Mobile broadband, delivered by Digicel Tonga and Tonga Communications Corporation (TCC), became the primary access method.

One Cable, One Vulnerability

But there was a problem with the Tonga Cable: there was only one of it. A single fiber pair, a single 827 km run across the seabed, a single point of failure between Tonga and the rest of the world.

Network engineers call this a SPOF — Single Point of Failure. For most countries, it's a theoretical risk. For Tonga, it became very real.

January 15, 2022: The Volcano

At 5:02 PM local time on January 15, 2022, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano — located about 65 km north of Tongatapu — erupted with a force rated VEI 5-6, one of the most powerful volcanic events of the 21st century. The eruption sent a shockwave around the Earth, triggered tsunamis across the Pacific, and launched an ash column 58 km into the stratosphere.

But for Tonga's internet, the damage came from below. The eruption generated massive underwater pyroclastic flows and debris that severed the Tonga Cable approximately 37 km offshore of Tongatapu. The domestic TDCE cable, which connected the capital to the outer islands of 'Eua, Ha'apai, and Vava'u, was also cut.

Tonga went dark.

For the first few days, the country had virtually no international communications — no internet, no international calling, no banking, no remittances, no way to coordinate disaster relief. This during a humanitarian crisis: ashfall contaminated water supplies, tsunamis damaged coastal communities, and the world couldn't reach them.

Limited satellite connectivity was restored within days through Digicel's existing satellite backup and emergency Starlink terminals that were donated and shipped to the island. But satellite meant megabits shared among 100,000 people — a return to pre-2013 conditions.

38 Days in the Dark

The cable ship CS Reliance, owned by SubCom, sailed from Papua New Guinea to repair the damage. The operation was extraordinarily difficult: volcanic debris on the seabed, ongoing seismic activity, and the cable had been damaged in multiple places by the underwater flows.

The international segment (Tonga to Fiji) was finally restored on February 22, 2022 — 38 days after the eruption. The domestic TDCE segments connecting the outer islands took additional weeks to repair.

For 38 days, a country in the middle of a natural disaster was essentially isolated from the global internet. It was the longest internet blackout caused by a natural disaster in modern history.

The Domestic Extension: TDCE

In 2018, five years after the main cable, Tonga Cable Limited completed the Tonga Domestic Cable Extension (TDCE) — a 410 km submarine system connecting Tongatapu to the outer island groups:

• Tongatapu → 'Eua (17 km south)
• Tongatapu → Ha'apai (160 km north)
• Ha'apai → Vava'u (130 km further north)

Before TDCE, the outer islands — home to roughly 30,000 people — relied on microwave and satellite backhaul from the capital. TDCE brought fiber to communities that had never had reliable broadband.

The TDCE was also severed by the 2022 eruption. The Ha'apai islands, closest to the volcano, were the last to be reconnected.

Why the Packets Go Through Sydney

Our traceroute reveals the fundamental reality of Tonga's connectivity: everything goes through Fiji, and Fiji goes through Sydney.

The path from Marseille to Singapore (57ms → 200ms) uses one of the SEA-ME-WE cables or AAE-1 — submarine systems connecting Europe to Southeast Asia through the Red Sea. From Singapore to Sydney (200ms → 285ms), the packets likely travel the Australia-Singapore Cable (ASC) or one of the Indigo systems. From Sydney, traffic reaches Fiji via the Southern Cross Cable, and from Fiji to Tonga on the Tonga Cable.

That's at least five submarine cable systems to reach one island nation: SEA-ME-WE → ASC → Southern Cross → Tonga Cable. Each one is a potential point of failure.

The 46 ms jump from Sydney to the Vodafone Samoa network (285ms → 335ms to Apia) represents the Southern Cross Cable from Sydney to Fiji (~3,200 km) plus the Tonga Cable from Fiji to Nuku'alofa (~827 km). Vodafone Samoa (AS17993, owned by Digicel/BW Digital) provides transit for Tonga through its Pacific network.

What GeoCables Sees Today

As of April 2026, the route from our monitoring points to Tonga is stable at 335-350ms — reasonable for a South Pacific island that requires packets to cross three continents before reaching the Pacific.

The single-cable vulnerability remains. There have been discussions about a Hawaiki Nui extension — a branch of the 14,000 km Hawaiki cable (New Zealand to the US) that could land at Vava'u — but as of 2026, this has not been completed. Tonga still depends on a single submarine cable to Fiji for its fiber connectivity.

The Numbers

• Population: ~106,000
• Islands: 170 (36 inhabited)
• Submarine cables: 2 (Tonga Cable international + TDCE domestic)
• Cable to Fiji: 827 km, single fiber pair
• Cost: US$32.4 million (World Bank + ADB funded)
• Internet penetration: ~45-50%
• Main ISPs: Digicel Tonga, Tonga Communications Corporation
• Longest outage: 38 days (January-February 2022, volcanic eruption)
• RTT from Middle East: ~340-350ms

One Cable Is Not Enough

Tonga's story is a cautionary tale for every island nation connected by a single submarine cable. The 2022 eruption proved what network engineers already knew: redundancy isn't a luxury, it's a necessity.

Until a second international cable reaches Tonga — whether via Hawaiki Nui or another project — the kingdom remains one volcanic eruption, one anchor drag, one earthquake away from being cut off from the world again. The 827 km of fiber between Nuku'alofa and Suva isn't just a cable. For 106,000 people, it's the only wire connecting them to the rest of humanity.