Pacific island turns to Australia for undersea cable after spurning China
The Pacific island of Nauru is negotiating for the construction of an undersea communications cable that could hook up to an Australian network, two sources with understanding of the talks told Reuters, following the earlier rejection of a Chinese proposal.
The United States and its own Pacific allies have concerns that cables laid by China could compromise regional security. Beijing has denied any intent to use commercial optic fibre cables, that have much larger data capacity than satellites, for spying.
Nauru, which includes strong ties to U.S. ally Australia, helped scupper a global Bank-led cable tender earlier this season over concerns the contract will be awarded to the former Huawei Marine, now called HMN Tech, after the Chinese firm lodged a bid coming in at a lot more than 20% below rivals.
The tiny Pacific nation of just over 12,000 people has approached the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to help fund an alternative, the development agency told Reuters.
"ADB is involved in very early discussions with the government of Nauru to explore possible options to greatly help fund an undersea cable to provide low-cost, high quality online sites," the ADB said in a statement to Reuters.
"The details of the connection arrangement and funding sources will be determined in due course."
The two sources said the brand new plan would involve laying a cable from Nauru to the Solomon Islands capital of Honiara, located about 1,250 kilometers apart.
The brand new line would then utilize the Coral Sea Cable system, a 4,700-km network that connects Australia to the Solomons and Papua New Guinea. That line, majority funded by Australia and built by Sydney-headquartered Vocus Group, was completed in 2019 to shut out a competing offer from Huawei Marine, then owned by Huawei Technologies.
The former Huawei Marine is currently majority owned by Shanghai-listed Hengtong Optic-Electric Co Ltd after Huawei Technologies sold the submarine cable business this past year.
Nauru's plan needs Australia and the Solomons to be up to speed, the sources said. It really is unclear if Nauru has requested financial the help of Australia or whether it only needs Canberra's permission to become listed on the Coral Sea Cable system.
One source, who has direct understanding of the planned cable route, described the talks as "early stage negotiations".
The next source provided details about discussions between Nauru officials and the ADB, Australia and the Solomons. The source said Nauru was along the way of "doing a deal".
The governments of Nauru, Australia and the Solomons didn't react to requests for comment. The World Bank said it had been not involved with discussions around cables connecting with Nauru.
Nauru was the first ever to raise concerns over a bid lodged by China's HMN Tech during the World Bank tender process this past year to build subsea cables for Nauru, Federated States of Micronesia and Kiribati, sources told Reuters in December. AMERICA followed up by warning the Pacific island nations that the HMN Tech bid posed a regional security threat.
The project then unravelled following the island governments heeded the U.S. warnings and declined to award a contract.
Australia has ramped up its occurrence in the Pacific through the creation of a A$2 billion ($1.5 billion)infrastructure financing facility and via its membership of the new "Quad" group, alongside the USA, India and Japan, to counter China's expanding interests in the Indo-Pacific.
Australia is also part of a trilateral partnership with america and Japan that was formed to finance an undersea optic fibre cable for Palau, another Pacific nation.
Washington has pressed governments all over the world to squeeze Huawei and other Chinese companies out of supplying sensitive communications equipment, alleging the business could give data to the Chinese government for spying, a charge denied by Beijing and Chinese telcos.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said in a statement to Reuters the other day that Chinese companies had an outstanding record in cyber security and they needed to be in a position to take part in a non-discriminatory business environment.
Nauru, positioned in the central Pacific, has retained diplomatic ties to Taiwan, creating tension with China, which regards Taiwan as its own territory. Hosting a major Pacific forum in 2018, Nauru's then president, Baron Waqa, described a Chinese envoy as "very insolent" and a "bully" after an angry exchange between officials.
Source: japantoday.com
