Telecom services to American Samoa islands restored using extremely long microwave link
Communication is a basic human need and speedy recovery is essential when you lose the connection. This was the case for the population of the remote Manu’a Islands in the American Samoa. Despite Covid traveling restrictions - Ericsson and American Samoa Telecommunications Authority (ASTCA) restored their vital connection to the world with an extremely long microwave backhaul link.
Highlights
American Samoa Telecommunications Authority, ASTCA, supplies telecommunication services to the residents of the American Samoan islands, a territory of the United States, which are found in a remote area of the Pacific Ocean. The primary backhaul system between the islands consists of fiber-optic cables and satellite connections. Over Independence Day weekend 2021, the undersea fiber-optic cable linking the Tutuila and Manu’a Islands failed, completely stranding the Manu’a Islands from all telecommunication services.
ASTCA selected Ericsson in 2019 to provide a high-capacity wireless backup system to the existing fiber-optic network between the islands. One of the planned microwave links was to connect the island Tutuila to the Manu’a Islands with a challenging distance of 84.23 miles (135.55 km). To put this into perspective, it’s the same distance as between New York City and Philadelphia.
Adding to the challenge was the fact that more than 95 percent of the link was over water with a high probability of multipath reflections that could degrade link performance. The solution was to use MINI-LINK 6291, a long haul split-mount system, with 6L GHz frequency, 2+0 with space diversity and with ACCP.
The MINI-LINK 6200 microwave product family combines multiple channels to create a trunk radio link while keeping low loss on the link budget. With low losses, the link can achieve long distances with high microwave capacity of up to 10Gbps while maintaining high availability.
Ericsson’s long-haul systems utilize the frequency range of 6-13 GHz, providing best-in-class spectrum efficiency and maximizing available frequency spectrum.
Ericsson received an urgent call on July 4 to get the microwave link between Tutuila to the Manu’a Islands up and running immediately – well ahead of the planned schedule. This was a challenge as the American Samoa islands are very remote and COVID-19 travelling restrictions were enforced. As much of the preparations were already in place, the Ericsson team could get the link installed with the local ASTCA team providing the installation of the microwave dishes and alignment with Ericsson’s remote support and guidance. Telecommunication services was then restored to the people of Manu’a islands. The link is now providing a steady 1Gbps backhaul most of the time of the year with 600Mbps at four 9’s availability, over this extremely long distance.
