A project to lay a submarine cable from Saipan to Guam by service provider Docomo Pacific has gained support from the CNMI Legislature and government.<\/p>\n
In a session late Tuesday, members of the Senate unanimously voted \u201cyes\u201d to the resolution supporting Docomo\u2019s project.<\/p>\n
All nine senators signed off on Senate Resolution 19-14, which requests the assistance of the Office of the Governor in having the permit of Docomo Pacific \u201cprocessed expeditiously so that Docomo Pacific can start its underground fiber optic network.\u201d<\/p>\n
S.R. 19-14 cited the recent breakdown of a submarine cable between Saipan and Tinian that caused a massive communications outage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe abrupt and unexpected disconnection of Internet and telephone services caused panic, frustration, and tremendous inconvenience to the people of the Commonwealth,\u201d the resolution stated.<\/p>\n
Docomo Pacific earlier bared plans to \u201csignificantly upgrade its network\u201d and one of the key components of the upgrade is placing a new undersea fiber cable between Guam and the Commonwealth.<\/p>\n
Senate President Victor B. Hocog (Ind-Saipan) said he and his colleagues in the Senate recognize that it is time for an alternative for the Commonwealth.<\/p>\n
Hocog has also sent a copy of the approved resolution to the Department of Public Lands, the Department of Public Works, and the Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality for review.<\/p>\n
Governor\u2019s support<\/strong><\/p>\n Gov. Eloy S. Inos yesterday said he welcomes the possibility of another submarine cable for the CNMI.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is good for the people. I\u2019ve always supported these types of projects,\u201d Inos said.<\/p>\n Inos thinks that IT&E, the service provider that has an existing submarine cable, would also support this, and an alternative submarine cable will probably \u201ctake out some of the pressure\u201d from IT&E.<\/p>\n In mid-July, then-acting governor Ralph DLG. Torres declared a state of significant emergency for the islands of Saipan, Tinian, and Rota after a massive communications breakdown affected and effectively isolated Saipan from the rest of the world.<\/p>\n The IT&E-owned fiber optic cable was heavily damaged by a passing typhoon on July 8, causing the loss of mobile telephone services and Internet access throughout the Commonwealth.<\/p>\n The outage effectively caused businesses\u2014including banks, financial institutions, and remittance services\u2014to grind to a halt.<\/p>\n In the state of emergency declaration, Torres said the \u201cdisruption of critical infrastructure services threaten the public peace, health, and safety of the Commonwealth\u2019s residents.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A project to lay a submarine cable from Saipan to Guam by service provider Docomo…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230,51,250,67],"class_list":["post-208575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-docomo-pacific","tag-guam","tag-network","tag-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208575\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}