Co-operative telecom links for Pacific?

Press, 30 June 1983, Page 15

Co-operative telecom links for Pacific?

NZPA Canberra Plans by Pacific Island nations co-operatively to improve their telecommunications links will be put to the South Pacific Forum meeting in Canberra in August. Recommendations directed towards over-coming the problems of isolation and distance have been formulated by 12 Pacific Island nations. The Australian Department of Communications, in a publication for World Communications Year, said the recommendations would have far-reaching consequences for the develop-

ment of the region as a whole. The forum submission follows a detailed study of the islands’ telecommunications needs, largely funded by Australia in 1981, and a meeting of South Pacific telecommunications Ministers in Tonga in April this year. The 1981 study followed Australia’s refusal to provide services for island countries on the domestic satellite system. The countries were told by the previous Federal Government that their

needs would be taken into account in the planning for the second generation satellite. The study, carried out by Telecom, O.T.C. and the New Zealand Post Office, was conducted in Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Nuie, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Cook Islands, Western Samoa, and Papua New Guinea. It recommended a balance of satellite and terrestrial services on a country-by-country basis and overall co-ordination of effort between the countries.