Satellite link to Pacific Islands still down

More than a million people in the Pacific Islands lost contact with the outside world when a satellite was knocked out by a power failure.

Last night, at least half those affected were still without international phone, Eftpos and bank services, despite Telecom working night and day with the satellite owners to restore communications to at least 11 affected countries.

Telecom New Zealand rents capacity on the Bermuda-registered Intelsat IS-804 satellite, which moved out of alignment after an electrical power system failure at the weekend.

There has been no communication with the crucial satellite, launched in 1997, since Saturday morning.

After the satellite's loss the Cook Islands, Samoa, American Samoa, the Chatham Islands, Solomon Islands, Kiribati, Niue, Vanuatu, Tokelau, Tuvalu and Tonga were left without communications with other countries.

Scott Base also lost communications but had access to emergency-only backup services.

Several other countries were also affected but had other alternatives, including New Caledonia, Tahiti, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, East Timor, Vietnam, Korea and Saipan.

Telecom spokeswoman Sarah Berry said bank services, Eftpos and airline data circuits had been affected. As a result, there could be flight delays to some Pacific islands.

"Some services out of New Zealand and Australia may also be partially affected to east Asian locations such as Vietnam and Beijing."

Air New Zealand said yesterday it knew of no impact on its flights.

Telecom customers in New Zealand were unable to make phone calls or data transmissions to the affected countries.

Ms Berry said Telecom staff were working alongside Intelsat on the problem and yesterday services were gradually being restored.

Islands are repositioning their transmitters to use alternative satellites. Intelsat is not expecting to regain service from the $106 million uninsured satellite, which will be left in space.

Ms Berry said Rarotonga in the Cook Islands and Samoa were restored at the weekend, Solomon Islands telecommunications were restored on Monday and Niue, Saipan and the Chatham Islands yesterday.

But last night some services were still not working smoothly. In the Cooks, internet services were down. The Solomons were without national telephone, fax and email links.

Foreign Affairs and Trade staff in Wellington still had no phone contact with diplomatic posts in Kiribati, Tonga, Samoa and Vanuatu last night.

Ms Berry said it was hoped that America Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and Kiribati would be back within 48 hours but there were no guarantees.

Intelsat was now providing co-ordinates for new satellites and Telecom was feeding that information to the islands so they could realign their satellite dishes.

"That's why it is taking time to process. We have staff working 24 hours," said Ms Berry.

Intelsat chief executive Conny Kullman said the loss of a satellite was an extremely rare event.

Mr Kullman said all necessary effort would be made to ensure satellite coverage throughout Asia and the Pacific.

Intelsat was working with satellite maker Lockheed Martin Corporation to find the problem.

In late November electrical problems ruined another satellite, but Intelsat said there was no connection as the two satellites were made by different companies to different designs.