New Board Appointed

The President of Republic of Palau has nominated, and the legislature has endorsed, a new BSCC Board of Directors. We welcome two new Board members, Conrad Ellechel and Tim Udui, with Keobel, Eric and Johvanna continuing. The new Board expressed a formal vote of thanks to the two outgoing Directors, BSCC’s founding Chairman, George Rechucher, and founding Director Clarinda Ziegler, for their leadership and service to BSCC and to the Republic of Palau. The founding Board did a lot of the hard work required to launch the original project we now call PC1, and made my job very easy as we delivered the first submarine cable, and opened for service in December 2017, ahead of schedule and under budget.

The new BSCC Board is:

Keobel Sakuma - Chairman

Eric Whipps - Treasurer

Johvanna Yaoch - Secretary

Tim Udui - Director

Conrad Ellechel - Director

CAP-A Network Extension 

The new Board takes up the directions set by the founding BSCC Board. In November 2019, we thought we would have the Network Extension, from the current single BSCC Capacity Access Point (CAP) at Ngeremlengui (CAP-N) to a new, more accessible, higher speed connectivity point in Airai, completed by February 2020.  However, a range of factors, including ongoing road improvements in Airai, have delayed completion. BSCC is installing a temporary access point at KB Shell intersection (CAP-KBS). This will be available from next week.

The new CAP-KBS access point will eliminate a major bottleneck in the delivery of high-speed internet to Palau. CAP-N access has been subject to the capacity (ie speed, in Gigabits per second) limitations of the current IP Radio connections and Babeldaob submarine festoon system. The new BSCC fiber extension will support whatever speed connections our customers require. Connection is being provided as dark fiber, that is, BSCC’s Retail Service Provider (RSP) customers can attach their equipment and treat it as part of their own network, with no interference from BSCC. Fiber pairs are allocated to each RSP, with pre-designed add / drop locations along the route, which RSPs can use to expand high speed connectivity around Babeldaob.

Two further elements of the CAP-A Network Extension Project have recently been green-lighted by Asian Development Bank (ADB). The whole CAP-A project is supported by ADB, through the balance of the loan advanced to construct the first cable. 

• A new Technical Center (CAP-A) will be constructed at the airport in Airai to provide a robust, high speed, reliable open access point to the shared BSCC infrastructure, available to all licensed Palau RSPs.

• Redundancy protection of the west-side underground micro-ducted micro-fiber network extension will be provided through a complementary extension around the Compact Road from Ngeremlengui to Airai on the north and east side of Babeldaob.

This east-side fiber extension will also include dark fiber pairs for RSP add/drop purposes. CAP-A should be completed in 2021, providing a robust, neutral international connection facility for the nation.

The same rigorous quality control and safety approach will be adopted for the east-side work as was applied on the west-side, using the same contractors – G&C Underground with environmental monitoring by Melekau Consulting.

PC2

Until it became obvious that the COVID-19 pandemic would have profound economic impacts, BSCC had been well advanced on a $30M project to deliver a second submarine cable connection, that would protect Palau’s society from the widespread negative impacts of a sustained interruption to PC1, where there is a single point of failure along the entire wet segment, with greatest risks close to shores in Palau and Guam. The time to repair a wet segment failure could be extensive, up to two months. 

The PC2 project would have been debt financed, in a blend of soft loans and commercial debt supported by Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) and Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP). While the loans would have been with BSCC, an RoP sovereign guarantee was required by all lenders. BSCC modelling demonstrated the proposal was viable, subject to BSCC holding its current price list, with no price increases necessary.

However, on March 24th BSCC suspended the PC2 project, because we would be foolish to commit all our available cash to it, with the economic fallout from the pandemic difficult to predict. 

The Australian Government stepped up to the plate, offering a mix of grants and debt that would allow BSCC to at least ensure a Branching Unit (BU) would be installed on the passing trunk cable, enabling future connection when the economic situation stabilised. This plan was developed in response to a request from the Minister of Finance for a solution that took advantage of the work already done on the PC2 project since late 2018.

Execution of the various contracts to enable this $4.2M PC2 Plan B are being lined up, for execution on a challenging timetable with the first, a grant agreement with AIFFP, to be signed in a matter of days.

The main trunk project started on time, on 31st March, and a marine survey is already under way. The survey of the segment from the offshore BU location to the reef outside the channel to a proposed landing at Ngardmau is already completed, thanks to a grant from the Australian Government, through its Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

While PC2 Plan B does not build the second cable connection, it allows Palau to do so at a time of its choosing, when we can finance it. Otherwise we would have to wait until the next trunk goes by and start again.

A resolution enabling a sovereign guarantee for the BSCC debt of $1.75M required to finance PC2 Plan B is being considered by the legislature at present.