Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — Despite COVID travel restrictions in the territory, Ericsson North American and American the Samoa Telecommunications Authority (ASTCA) restored the vital Manu’a connection to the Tutuila and the rest of the world with an extremely long microwave backhaul link.

Over Independence Day weekend 2021, the undersea fiber-optic cable linking the Tutuila and Manu’a Islands failed, completely stranding the Manu’a Islands from all telecommunication services. The primary backhaul system between the islands consists of fiber-optic cables and satellite connections.

ASTCA had selected Ericsson in 2019 to provide a high-capacity wireless backup system to the existing fiber-optic network between the islands. One of the planned microwave links was to connect the island Tutuila to the Manu’a Islands with a challenging distance of 84.23 miles (135.55 km).

Adding to the challenge was the fact that more than 95 percent of the link was over water with a high probability of multipath reflections that could degrade link performance. The solution was to use MINI-LINK 6291, a long haul split-mount system, with 6L GHz frequency, 2+0 with space diversity and with ACCP.

The MINI-LINK 6200 microwave product family combines multiple channels to create a trunk radio link while keeping low loss on the link budget. With low losses, the link can achieve long distances with high microwave capacity of up to 10Gbps while maintaining high availability.

Ericsson received an urgent call on July 4 to get the microwave link between Tutuila to the Manu’a Islands up and running immediately – well ahead of the planned schedule. As much of the preparations were already in place, the Ericsson team could get the link installed with the local ASTCA team providing the installation of the microwave dishes and alignment with Ericsson’s remote support and guidance.

"We are very happy that we could be of assistance to ASTCA and the inhabitants of Manu’a Islands in this difficult situation. These efforts are a testament to Ericsson product quality, technical and operations expertise and experience at its best – delivering one of our longest microwave links and restoring the American Samoa telecommunication services when most needed," said Gerald Fisher, Sales Director of Ericsson, North America.

Telecommunication services was then restored to the people of Manu’a islands. The link is now providing a steady 1Gbps backhaul most of the time of the year with 600Mbps at four 9’s availability, over this extremely long distance.

"We are grateful to Ericsson for their speedy response and with the quality of the microwave backhaul link. Despite the challenging conditions the link has restored services to the people of Manu’a and is now providing a stable connection," Chuck Leota, CEO of ASTCA said.

BACKGROUND

Ericsson is a hardware, software, and services provider for the rapidly changing environment of communications technology and has been an ASTCA partner since 2019.

(Source: Ericsson Mobility Report)