How the communication cuts hit countries throughout the Pacific

Cook Islands

In the Cooks, people could only telephone others on their own island. Some television satellite links were disrupted.

Phone services were restored in Rarotonga after about 24 hours, but internet services were still down last night.

At Cafe Tupuna on Aitutaki, a spokesman said businesses could not use Eftpos. "The planes kept flying but Cook Island News said all the Air New Zealand systems went down so they had to do everything manually.

"Otherwise, there were not really any major problems, just that we were cut off from the outside world for a couple of days. But then, we're cut off from the outside world even in the normal run of things."

Tourism businesses coped by returning to more traditional methods of communication.

Cameron Robertson, a Scotsman who owns Castaway Beach Villas in Rarotonga, said they were booking by facsimile rather than on-line.

He said the internet was still down last night, and phones were down for 24 hours.

"It was a bit restrictive because we were totally cut off so there was no means of communication at all here.

"It kind of alarms you about what could happen.

"I'm keen on soccer, coming from Scotland and with time spent in Liverpool, and I couldn't get any soccer results from the internet. Fortunately the weather has compensated - we've had weeks of sunny 35-degree days, unlike in New Zealand."

The Samoas

American Samoa began to experience problems at noon on Friday.

Last night, 80 per cent of the telecoms network was still not functioning.

Most phone calls and electronic data coming out of American Samoa goes to the United States mainland.

The American Samoa Telecommunications Authority said links with two mainland telco companies, MCI and Sprint, had been restored but others, including HawaiTel in Hawaii, had only been partly recovered.

An authority spokesman said links with New Zealand and Australia remained down.

He said data for transactions with ANZ Bank in New Zealand was being rerouted using telecom carriers in other countries.

A public holiday yesterday had given American Samoa "a little breathing room" but problems were expected when people returned to work today.

Systems in Samoa were reported to have been restored during the weekend, but calls to the Prime Minister's Department, the Samoa Broadcasting Corporation studios and the New Zealand High Commission in Apia would not go through last night.

An operator at New Zealand's international directory service said some calls to Samoa were getting through but many were not making it.

Solomon Islands

International calls were restored by noon yesterday but the Solomons are still without national telephone, fax and email services.

Solomons Telekom operates national phone circuits from a ground station in Honiara via the Intelsat Pacific Ocean Satellite.

The population of 400,000 is spread over seven main islands but is centred mainly in the capital, Honiara.

The loss of the satellite service has created a problem for the Solomons Islands Broadcasting Corporation, which cannot receive its radio programme feed from the BBC in London.

Senior technical officer Andrew Lano said from Honiara that the feed would not be restored for at least a week.

"It's a big problem for us. We all depend on telephones to call to our islands and at the moment we cannot communicate with provincial centres.

"We are relying on high-frequency radio and we are lucky to have some provincial email stations that operate so we can transmit email to high-frequency radio.

"It's one email station per province but that's still keeping some of us in touch."

The corporation is relying on shortwave broadcasts from New Zealand and from Radio Australia.