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Tonga has cable connection to outside world restored

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Tonga’s two-week period without a working subsea cable to Fiji has ended.

The cable had originally fallen over on January 20, and a second fault was subsequently found; however, RadioNZ reported on Saturday that the connection to the main island has been restored.

On Friday afternoon, the Tongan government had said it would take up to 18 hours to splice the cable before services would resume.

“The work to splice the cable on Tonga’s side started at 7am this morning. After the splice, several tests will be conducted, which will take up to 10 hours,” Edwin Liava’a, CEO of Tonga Cable, said at the time.

“By midday tomorrow, the international submarine cable should be back online if there will be no major complications.”

By Saturday evening, it was expected that Tonga’s telcos would be back using the cable connection.

While the cable was down, satellite providers rushed to fill the gap. Mobile network provider Digicel used SES networks, and local ISP Ezinet used a Kacific Ku-band satellite, while New Zealand telco Spark helped get Tonga Communications back online using Intelsat satellites.

Spark said it had restored 100Mbps of connectivity within five days of the outage, which is approximately a quarter of the nation’s usual usage.

The 827km cable between Tonga and Fiji that connects to the Southern Cross Cable went live in August 2013, and was funded jointly by the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank. It was later extended out to the Ha’apai and Vava’u islands in April last year.

RadioNZ reported that the connection to the northern islands was expected to take another couple of days, as it too has been cut.

It was also reported that Tonga Cable is looking into a second cable connection to the Pacific nation.


(Image: Tongan government)
tonga-fault1-fiji-side-kink-a.jpg

(Image: Tongan government)

SUBSEA CABLES ACROSS THE GLOBE

  • Vocus’ Australia-Singapore Cable (ASC)
  • Vocus’ North West Cable System (NWCS) between Darwin and Port Hedland, and the new Tiwi Islands spur being added
  • The Australian government’s Coral Sea subsea cable, being constructed by Vocus to connect Australia, Papua New Guinea, and Solomon Islands and funded through the foreign aid budget
  • Google’s Dunant transatlantic subsea cable between Virginia Beach in the United States to the French Atlantic coast
  • The Indian government’s Chennai-Andaman and Nicobar islandssubsea cable, being built by NEC
  • Southern Cross Cables’ NEXT subsea cable system between Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, being built by SubPartners
  • The Trident subsea cable system connecting Perth with Singapore via Indonesia
  • The Jupiter subsea cable connecting the US, Japan, and the Philippines and being built by a consortium including Facebook, Amazon, SoftBank, NTT Com, PLDT, and PCCW
  • The Hawaiki subsea cable between Australia, New Zealand, and the US
  • Superloop’s Hong Kong cable
  • Telstra’s Hong Kong Americas (HKA) cable between Hong Kong and the US
  • Telstra’s Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN) between Hong Kong and the US
  • Google’s Japan-Guam-Australia (JGA) cable system
  • The Asia-Pacific Gateway (APG) subsea cable connecting China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, and Singapore, owned by a consortium including China Telecom, China Unicom, China Mobile, NTT Communications, KT Corporation, LG Uplus, StarHub, Chunghwa Telecom, CAT, Global Transit Communications, Viettel, and VNPT, and being constructed by NEC
  • The Southeast Asia Japan 2 cable (SJC2), which will have 11 landing stations in Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, being built by NEC and funded by a consortium including China Mobile International, Chunghwa Telecom, Chuan Wei, Facebook, KDDI, Singtel, SK Broadband, and VNPT
  • The Bay to Bay Express Cable System (BtoBE), connecting Singapore and Hong Kong with the US, being funded by consortium including Facebook, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and China Mobile International, and being built by NEC

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How To Use PS5’s Screen Reader Accessibility Feature (And Why You Might Want To)

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The Screen Reader is one of the many features available in the PlayStation 5’s accessibility suite. In a nutshell, it’s a digital narrator that can automatically parse and read out any text that appears on screen while using a PS5. This means that Screen Reader can also provide audible instructions for the general operation of your PS5 console, which is another useful reason to turn it on.

Activating your PS5’s Screen Reader is as simple as flipping a switch in the console’s settings.

  1. From the PS5 Home screen, open the Settings menu.

  2. Open the Accessibility options.

  3. Open the Screen Reader tab.

  4. Activate the Enable Screen Reader toggle.

From the Screen Reader options menu, you can also control the rate at which the narrator speaks, whether it uses a masculine or feminine voice, and the volume of the narration. Additionally, while the default language of the Screen Reader is set to whatever your console’s language is, the Screen Reader has full support for 12 different languages. The supported languages include Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

Finally, you can use your controller to start and stop the narration midway. Press the PS and Triangle buttons together to pause and play the narration or press the PS and R1 buttons to start the narration over from the beginning. If you ever get tired of hearing the narrator or you have enabled it accidentally, you can always toggle it back off from the Screen Reader options menu.

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5 Emergency Tools You Should Always Keep In Your Car

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You probably remember at least one time in your childhood when your parents’ car needed a jump from a neighbor using jumper cables. In recent years, however, jump starter batteries that you can keep inside your car have become cheaper and more prevalent, and they’re now a must-have for your vehicle. The upside to having a portable battery you can jump your car with is obvious — you don’t need to rely on another vehicle or willing driver to bring your car back to life. This is especially crucial if you’re in an isolated area or it’s the middle of the night.

Jump starter batteries have a few caveats, as they are more expensive than cables, take up slightly more space, and, most importantly, you need to remember to keep them charged. However, their benefits outweigh these slight inconveniences, and it’s worth buying a good one even if they can get a little pricey. 

This jump starter battery from DeWalt retails at $182, but it comes with everything you need. That includes LED lights to see your engine in the dark, an alarm if you’re not connecting to your battery correctly, a power bank to charge your phone, and even an air compressor. Plus, it’s also built to work in cold weather.

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5 Workflow Generative AI Tools That Could Soon Help Make Your Job Easier

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While Bing Chat may have gotten a lot of attention, it isn’t the only Microsoft product that has had its functionality enhanced by the addition of AI. Microsoft 365 Copilot integrates AI across the Microsoft 365 suite, allowing it to pull information from multiple sources and significantly improve your productivity. 

Copilot can now be used for creative purposes in Word, Powerpoint, Outlook, Teams, and even Viva Engage. It can be used to write, edit and otherwise generate documents, reports, presentations, emails, questions, messages, and more. Furthermore, with its integration into Excel, Copilot can also be used as a powerful data analysis tool, giving you deep insights into your data in response to simply-worded questions, even generating models and visualizations as needed.

These implementations significantly increase the capabilities of each of the Microsoft 365 programs they have been added to. However, what really sets Copilot apart from many other implementations of generative AI is its ability to draw information from across Microsoft 365 and combine it for whatever you may require. This feature is called Business Chat and allows you to pull information from multiple sources, such as your email, calendar, and chats, all at once. You can have it generate updates, overviews, reports, and more so you can stay up to speed while keeping your team similarly informed.

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