The U.S. Army is spending $100 million to bring a fiber optic cable from Guam to Kwajalein, where the Army operates a major missile testing facility.
The Marshall Islands will need to spend nearly $18 million for its share of the cable and make a down payment of $2 million by November 21. But after several years of debating the project, Marshall Islands officials say they’re ready to put up the money.
Lt. Gen. Kevin Campbell, who commands the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command, recently described the fiber optic cable as the “critical enabler” to transform Kwajalein’s Reagan Test Site to meet the U.S.’s changing space and missile defense.
“Cabinet has already endorsed it (the cable project),” Minister of Transportation and Communications Dennis Momotaro said Friday in an interview. “We really want it to happen.”
Business leaders and health officials have been pushing government in the Marshall Islands to fund the costly communications upgrade.
“This is what we really need considering the fact the Marshall Islands is disconnected from the rest of the world by large bodies of water,” said Carlos Dominick, chief operations officer at a local construction company in Majuro. “It is time that this country wakes up to the 21st century and takes hold of the opportunity that today’s technology can offer us.”
Majuro Hospital surgeon Dr. Kamal Gunawardane said installation of the fiber cable would result in major improvements in health care while at the same time cutting costs by allowing “real time” use of medical experts in other countries. Currently, “there is no Oreal time’ interaction between the medical consultants (outside the Marshall Islands) and the attending physicians at Majuro or Ebeye,” Gunawardane said. “Having broadband Internet access that could be provided by a fiber optic cable would allow doctors in the Marshall Islands to consult specialists anywhere in the world for emergency and other cases — even while surgery is in progress — taking medical care to a new level.”
The Army’ Reagan Test Site faces the same bottlenecks from current satellite-based communications that limit businesses, schools and the hospitals in the Marshall Islands from rapid communications.
“Currently, all communications into and out of U.S. Army Kwajalein Atoll/Reagan are satellite based, resulting in bandwidth limitations and time lag issues,” Campbell said. With the fiber cable, Kwajalein will have access to almost limitless high-speed, immediate communications ability. The fiber cable “allows the transmission and reception of large amounts of information in near real-time,” he said. Once the fiber cable becomes operational in 2010, the Army will be able to manage range operations in “real time” at the Space and Missile Defense Command headquarters in Alabama instead of from RTS, as is done now.
“Remoting (to the U.S.) will make it less expensive for Reagan Test Site customers because they will be able to observe, command and control, and participate in testing operations using Reagan Test Site capabilities without the cost of sending large numbers of personnel out to Kwajalein,” Campbell said. Once the fiber cable is in use, “more space and missile programs will choose to conduct their tests and evaluations at RTS,” he said.
The Marshall Islands is seeking loan funding from the U.S. Rural Utility Service. U.S. officials have indicated they need a government guarantee, which is anticipated shortly.
“We’ll finalize the guarantee next week,” Momotaro said Friday. “This is our chance, otherwise we miss out.”
About $2 million is needed as an initial down payment by the November 21 contract-signing deadline, said National Telecommunications Authority General Manager Tony Muller.
The submarine cable is to be installed by Tyco International. It will also link islands in the Federated States of Micronesia, which is funding a branch off the Army’s cable between Guam and Kwajalein.
