Fiji reaches for the stars

Business

Fiji reaches for the stars and plans more world links

From ROBERT KEITH-REID in Suva

A $6 million space communications earth station, opened at Suva in May by Britain’s Cable and Wireless group might seem to some to be a culmination of years of effort in developing Fiji’s telecom munications system.

Actually, it heralded only the beginning of a government drive to expand the coverage and improve the quality of a communications service that people in many other countries of Fiji’s level of

development already might envy.

Of late, Fiji businessmen have grumbled that the telephone service has deteriorated.

Perhaps it has to some degree. But, nevertheless, from Suva it’s possible to reach most populated parts of Fiji, and the world, with speed and clarity through telephone, radio-telephone, telex and cable services. At present, according to the Posts and Telecommunications Depart ment, there are very few areas of Fiji that are not within 15 miles of a public telephone.

By the end of the next decade it is in tended to have improved coverage to a level at which no one should be more than two or three miles from a phone.

Sole responsibility for telecom munications services within Fiji is vested in the Posts and Telecommunications Department of the Ministry for Com munications, Works and Tourism. Unlike other government departments this, since 1974, has operated on a commercial ac

counting basis.

This means it ploughs all its telephone service and other revenues back into development instead of paying them to the government and receiving recurrent and capital finance allocations from the annual national budget.

While the department is responsible for Fiji’s South Pacific island regional, as well as internal, communication links, Cable and Wireless Ltd has a government licence to run international services through its own world-wide cable and space station network.

Centred in Suva, Fiji’s internal telecom munications services reach out to towns and villages in the main islands of Viti

Levu and Vanua Levu and to about 60 other of the 350 islands in the Fiji Group via telephone, radio telephone and telex.

Suva’s telephone connections with such western Viti Levu centres as Lautoka, Nadi and Sigatoka are through modern microwave links.

Calls between Suva and Labasa and Savusavu in Vanua Levu are carried by a VHF link, and work is progressing on new microwave systems to improve com munications between Viti Levu and Vanua Levu and also with the third largest island of Taveuni and with small islands of Lau, in the east of the group.

By the end of 1975, most towns in Viti Levu had automatic exchanges or were slated to get them within a few years.

Country areas still rely on manual ex changes with subscribers sharing lines.

The interiors of the two big islands, 4,000 square mile Viti Levu and 2,100 square mile Vanua Levu, are the areas most poorly off for telephone services.

A few isolated agricultural or medical stations, or camps maintained by mineral prospecting companies, have a radio telephone service; otherwise people in the mountainous interior must walk for miles if they want to get to a ’phone.

Outlying islands are far better serviced, although, until recently, communication with them was prone to frequent disrup

tions through the deterioration of the cast off World War Two gear with which their r/t stations were equipped. This is being gradually replaced with single side-band high frequency radio or very high frequen cy radio, according to the needs of each location.

Outer island r/t stations work to set daily schedules but can usually be raised for the handling of urgent messages out side ordinary hours by a request broadcast in the daily programmes of the Fiji Broad

casting Commission.

For a small fee, the FBC will, in any case carry, at peak listening hours, service and other messages, such as death notifications, intended for people in isolated areas who can’t ordinarily be reached by no/mal public telecommunica tion services.

Telegrams can be lodged at about 60 agencies throughout the country and an in creasing number of local inter-island ships are being fitted with ship-to-shore equip ment.

Suva’s telex exchange has capacity for 160 subscribers’ lines and by the end of 1970 more than 100 of them were in use mainly by hotels, airlines, travel agencies and large trading companies for messages local and worldwide.

Fiji’s telephone communications with its immediate neighbours are still primitive.

Talking to countries like Tonga, Western Samoa, the New Hebrides and the Solomons is very much a shouting match

transmitted by radio-telephone equipment

which is subject to severe fading and dis tortion.

Moves are afoot, through such agencies as the South Pacific Commission and South Pacific Bureau for Economic Co operation, for a regional scheme to im prove Pacific Islands telecommunications.

But nothing has been firmed and it looks as if it could be years before talk produces any real improvement in available services.

The quality of Fiji’s telecommunications links with the world beyond the South Pacific region are something else. Crystal clear contact, 24 hours a day, is possible with Australia, New Zealand, North

America and Europe thanks to the Com monwealth Pacific Cable.

This passes through Suva and in May was supplemented by the 105 ft diameter dish of the earth station opened at Wailoku, six miles from Suva, by Cable and Wireless Ltd.

The big dish gives Fiji direct access to the international space communications system for the first time. Operating through the Intelsat IV satellite, it provides direct telephone, telex, high-speed data and facsimile circuits with Australia and New Zealand.

It is equipped to deal with more than 1,800 international circuits, although nothing like this number is needed at the moment.

Such areas as Canada and Hong Kong will be brought into the new service later, and it can be equipped to receive and transmit inter-continental colour television if need be.

The Fiji Government plans to spend about $2O million on improving internal telecommunications services between this year and 1980.

About 15,000 telephone lines were in use at the end of 1975 and 5,000 people were on the waiting list for them.

It’s hoped to put another 10,500 work ing lines in by 1980, but growth rates are such that the P and T Department admits that the waiting list will probably have grown to 11,500 by that date.

More radio stations will be established in rural districts in which demand does not justify a complete exchange system or cable connection.

As an experiment, a new rural cable with public telephone at intervals of about a mile along its route will be laid in an area, not yet decided, where there are or will be roads and which has a significant

development potential.

If successful, this system will be follow ed by more.

Other major development features will be a new VHP trunk link between Suva and Nabouwalu in Vanua Levu, the exten sion of the Lau VHP network, and a new high-capacity microwave system to deal with the rapid expansion in Suva-Lautoka traffic.

Work slated for this year will cost over $4 million and provide about 2,000 more telephone, telex and private branch work ing lines. Six new public radio telephone stations will be opened in isolated areas and islands.

Labasa’s automatic exchange will get a 1,000-line extension this year and Deuba exchange will get 200 lines.

Ba’s exchange will get a 600 line exten sion next year and a new 1,600 line ex change is due for opening at Nausori in 1978.

Extensions of the Savusavu, Levuka, Navua and Rakiraki exchanges will occur between 1977 and 1980.