DataCo plans outage to fix Coral Sea cable system

PNG DataCo Limited (DataCo) chief executive officer Paul Komboi says there will be a planned outage on the Coral Sea Cable System (CS2) between Port Moresby and Sydney from May 14 to 21.
However, Komboi said the date could be delayed to October.
“DataCo management has considered this outage as a critical precautionary measure to mitigate serious issues going into the future and the life of this asset,” he said.
“Since commissioning of the CS2 cable, a shunt fault was detected in early 2021 posing a risk on the ongoing smooth operation of the cable system.
“During the outage window from May 14 to 21, all international bound traffic for internet and private leased circuits on CS2 will be routed on alternate paths via PPC-1 submarine cable from Madang to Sydney and Madang to Guam and possibly O3B satellite system out of Port Moresby.
“This whole exercise will result in degradation of services because the alternate paths will not have enough bandwidth capacity to cater for the demands of the present traffic profile on CS2 and will also result in increased latency during the outage window,” he said.
“All service providers are hereby notified to consider alternate redundancies to back up their services during the outage period.
“DataCo sincerely apologises for any inconvenience this outage may cause to businesses.
“We will provide further advice and update on the progress of this exercise until services are normalised.”