Travellers on the Compact Road between Airai and the Ngeremlengui turnoff will have noticed optical fiber laying activity over the last couple of months. This work is being undertaken by BSCC to improve network access for our customers, the three Palau Retail Service Providers (RSPs), PNCC, Palau Telecoms and Palau Mobile.

The defining theme of Palau’s approach to the telecommunications was spelled out in the President’s signing statement for the 2017 Telecoms Act: shared infrastructure, shared cost. The main shared infrastructure at present is BSCC’s submarine cable network linking Palau to the rest of the world. In pursuit of that theme, BSCC is expanding its network to provide greater effectiveness and efficiency. BSCC is currently building a fiber link to extend our network from Ngeremlengui to Arai, where we can readily interconnect with the Airai / Koror fiber network. The result will be faster, more reliable access for our RSP customers.

There are three stages to this work:

Fiber extension from the Capacity Access Point at Ngeremlengui Cable Landing Station (CAP N) to a new access point at the airport site in Airai (CAP A).
Construction of a building at the airport to house CAP A and the BSCC office.
East-side fiber extension, to close a loop to the north and east around the Compact Road, thus providing a link with no single point of failure.

The principles governing the project are to minimise disruption to the public, minimise the impact on public road infrastructure, and to maximise the utility of the new network. Accordingly, BSCC’s contractor, G&C Construction, is taking all necessary precautions to ensure public safety while the work proceeds. BSCC has also employed Melekau Consulting to provide independent monitoring of the project from an environmental and public safety perspective.

The technology deployed on the Compact Road sections is very unobtrusive micro trenching / micro-ducting. A cut is made right at the edge of the road surface, where it meets the slurry on the road verge designed for utilities ducts, or a concrete gutter. This ensures no impact on the road surface itself, while leaving the verge available for any future uses.

The cut is made by a giant saw, and is very narrow, less than two inches wide.

Saw in action at Ngatpang Village corner

Microduct is fed into the cut to carry the 48 fiber strands being installed by BSCC. In one section on the Ngeremlengui Road about a kilometre long, PNCC distribution cable and fiber is sharing the BSCC trench. The Ngeremlengui Road sections use a more traditional (but still quite narrow) telecoms trench, since the road design does not have the utilities slurry available on the sides of the Compact Road.

Compact Road micro-trenching uses a narrower cut.

Once the duct is installed, concrete seal and then perma-patch is applied, and the result is very nearly invisible.

The fiber link includes 9 fiber pair which RSPs can use to provide local service along the route. These local fibers are accessible from a series of shutter boxes along the route.

The RSP fibers will be provided as “dark fiber”, effectively placing them under the control and management of the RSPs, who will integrate them into their networks to facilitate improved services to all the villages along the route. The project will be completed within the financial envelope of the original Asian Development Bank (ADB) loan for the submarine cable connection. There will be no extra BSCC charges for access to this shared infrastructure, so there should be no need for any increase to retail prices.

Work is nearly half completed. We expect the job to be finished in February 2020. Also coming in 2020: the east-side extension to close the Babeldaob loop, and the CAP A building.

Once the Ngeremlengui to Airai fiber is completed, RSPs will no longer face the speed limitations that have acted on a brake on capacity growth up to now. Currently, two of the RSPs use IP Radio to access CAP N, and one uses an old fiber network with limited throughput. The new fiber links will mean that RSPs will enjoy virtually unlimited access speeds. This will have a positive impact on quality of service to retail customers.

BSCC thanks the public for its continuing patience and support as we fulfil our mission to provide world class wholesale infrastructure for Palau telecommunications.