International connectivity
Solomon Islands relied on satellite for its international gateway until 2020. Although domestic costs were effectively moderated by competition, the country did not enjoy the benefits which some other Pacific nations have in terms of faster internet access speed and lower charges for international interconnectivity, because those nations had connections through high capacity undersea cables.
That changed in 2020, when the Coral Sea Cable (CS2) and the Solomon Islands Domestic Network (SIDN) came into commercial service — see submarine cable. The new capacity of the Coral Sea Cable alone was expected to be 2000 times larger than the country’s usage at the time.
Established mobile network operators still require satellite and microwave connectivity for telecommunications distribution around provincial locations. Additionally, the new international Low Earth Orbit and Near Earth Orbit constellations will be accessible from throughout the Solomon Islands, meaning that local internet connectivity can be achieved without a ubiquitous nation-wide network. Moreover, the new satellite services are expected to have very low latency, making them comparable with cable services for sensitive applications such as financial transactions.
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