📡 Data & IoT

Coral Sea Undersea Fiber Optic Core Connection

Port Moresby connects via the Coral Sea Cable System, a 4,700km, 40Tbps submarine cable to Sydney and Honiara built by Vocus and Alcatel Submarine Networks, ready for service December 2019 and operated by PNG DataCo (established 2014) under exclusive rights of use.

Live 📅 since 2020

🤖 AI-generated summary of the sources below — how this works · 🔎 Last verified 2026-08-02

📡 Data & IoT Connectivity & 5G

📊 Impact

Wholesale bandwidth prices fell close to 40% within weeks of launch (PNG DataCo). Consumer mobile-data prices stayed largely flat for the next several years, independent weekly price tracking by ANU's Development Policy Centre found — shifting only once a third mobile operator entered the market in 2022.

🎓 Lesson

A cable landing is a wholesale event; a cheaper phone bill needs a competitive retail market on top of it, and that took years longer to arrive.

Evidence🏛️ Official

Scale🌍 National

CostA$136M (K324M)

📖 Terms in this entry: LoRaWAN

Sources

↗ PNG DataCo (operator)Official corporate infrastructure profile managing state broadband deployment.

↗ Coral Sea Cable Company (authority)Official page by the city or public authority behind the project.

↗ Business Advantage PNG (press)News coverage of the project.

This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed above and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.

Continue exploring

Compare this project

🇸🇪 Stokab: Stockholm's Municipal Open-Access Dark Fibre Network · Stockholm Two wholesale connectivity models: Port Moresby's cable dropped bandwidth prices ~40%; Stockholm's Stokab has leased dark fibre since 1994. 🇿🇦 Digital City Strategy · Cape Town Different scales of the same idea: Port Moresby's submarine cable is a wholesale gateway; Cape Town wholesales ~848km of its own city fibre. 🇵🇬 Port Moresby CCTV Command and Control Centre · Port Moresby Another verified project from Port Moresby.

Explore the wider context

🗺️ Your City's Problem Map Is Really a Map of Who Complains 📶 Connectivity & 5G guide 🏙️ Port Moresby city profile 📡 Data & IoT projects

📎 Cite this project

1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Coral Sea Undersea Fiber Optic Core Connection” — Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/moresby-telecom-backbone/ (last verified 2026-08-02). Data: CC BY 4.0.

The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.

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