Undersea cables bring Pacific nations online, but there are concerns China is trying to tap in




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One expert says Australia has moved to “head off” Chinese-built infrastructure projects in the Pacific.   (ABC News: Emma Machan)

Across the Pacific, undersea cables weave between island nations, bringing them online and, in some cases, connecting them to Australia, but some governments fear this interconnectivity comes with risk.

Currently, there is discussion about how the small island nation of Nauru will connect to high-speed internet. 

There was a plan for a World Bank project to connect Nauru to Guam — a regional hub and a territory of the United States — but a Chinese company bid for the project and, according to Reuters, Washington considered that a security risk and the project was put on ice

Now, there are reports Nauru could connect to the Coral Sea Cable, which attaches to Australia at Sydney’s Tamarama Beach. 

Questions remain around who would build the Nauru project and whether Australia would allow it.   

Huawei in the Pacific 

Undersea cables sit at the intersection of technology, international aid, cybersecurity and diplomacy. 

For island nations in the Pacific to access high-speed internet, they need to route traffic through one of the three regional hubs — Sydney, Guam and Hawaii. 

Like ports and airstrips, cables are infrastructure projects that companies — and countries — can build in the Pacific that could be considered a strategic asset now or in years to come. 

Take the Coral Sea Cable as an example. It connects Port Moresby in Papua New Guniea and Honiara in the Solomon Islands to Sydney. 

Australian aid paid for most of the Coral Sea Cable and pushed out a deal the Solomon Islands had done with Chinese firm Huawei Marine.

The contract was for Huawei Marine to lay a cable between Honiara and Sydney, which would have seen Chinese hardware connecting to the backbone of Australia’s domestic internet infrastructure.

“That was seen as a red line that Australia would not cross and so we jumped in with a better deal providing the cable as a grant that would be implemented with a procurement partner of Australia’s choosing — that wouldn’t be Chinese,” director of the Lowy Institute’s Pacific Island Program Jonathan Pryke said.  

This was at a time when Australia had just banned Huawei from the 5G and NBN networks.

Huawei Marine, now trading as HMN Technologies, also bid on the East Micronesia cable project that would have seen Nauru, Kiribati and the Federated States of Micronesia connect, via several other cables, to Guam, but the US reportedly had concerns about the Chinese firm’s involvement. 

The project is now on hold because the bids from all three companies that pitched for the job were deemed ineligible. 

“The process has concluded without an award due to non-responsiveness to the requirements of the bidding documents,” a spokesperson for the World Bank said in a statement to the ABC. 

The details behind the decision to rule out all three bids, one of which was from HMN Technologies, are confidential, but the World Bank did say it was working with governments in the region on the next steps. 

 

The ABC did not receive a response from the Chinese Foreign Ministry but, in an earlier statement to Reuters, a spokesperson said: “As a matter of principle, I want to emphasise that Chinese companies have always maintained an excellent record in cyber security.” 

“The Chinese government has always encouraged Chinese companies to engage in foreign investment and cooperation according to market principles, international regulations and local laws.”

Dr Amanda Watson from Australian National University has mapped cable projects right across the Asia-Pacific region. 

She said there were two types of cybersecurity risks in undersea cable projects. 

“The first one is if you have internet bandwidth availability that’s increased, then there’s just a general cybersecurity risk increase because you might have citizens, businesses or utilities that could potentially be victims of cyber attacks,” she said.

“The second type of cybersecurity issue would be perceived questions about whether technologies from certain countries might be at risk of data exfiltration, which is where a company or a country might try to extract data from a modem or a cable.” 

Moves by the West to block Chinese bids on cable projects point to a larger trend. 

Mr Pryke said Australia was once happy to leave the development of large infrastructure projects in the Pacific to the World Bank and the Asia Development Bank because they were difficult undertakings but, with Chinese businesses often offering low-cost bids, the dynamic had now changed.  

“One of the side effects of that has been because the Asia Development Bank and World Bank run open and low-cost procurement models … more and more of their projects have been awarded to Chinese state enterprises. 

“So Australia has decided we can’t be absent. We need to be providing viable alternatives to procurement models that don’t so radically favour Chinese state enterprise because of these strategic concerns.” 

Another example came this week, when Telstra confirmed it was in discussions to acquire telecommunications company Digicel Pacific in a partnership with the Australian government.  

The move was widely considered a political block, after reports state-owned China Mobile was interested in the acquisition. 

The Australian government would reportedly contribute $1.5 billion to the purchase. 

From undersea cables to the telecommunications retailers that use them, there is an effort to stop Chinese firms playing a role in this critical infrastructure.  

Getting Nauru online

Dr Watson said many Pacific island nations were keen to improve their connectivity and telecommunications.  

“The internet in the Pacific is quite expensive by comparison to many other parts of the world, so this also means it’s out of reach to the average citizen, so they can’t do things we might take for granted, such as internet banking,” Dr Watson said. 

“The internet cables, which are … tubes containing fibre optic cables, can transmit more data than satellites, so a whole lot of internet data around the world — email traffic, social media, when people log onto a website, or download a form, a lot of that goes through undersea internet cables.” 

Nauru doesn’t currently have any undersea cable connections and Digicel is its only telecommunications retailer.

Reuters has reported that with the East Micronesia cable project on hold, Nauru is in discussion with the Australian government over a proposal to connect the small island nation to the Coral Sea Cable. 

“The idea of a Nauru to Solomon Islands cable means that the internet traffic from Nauru could go potentially go via Solomon Islands, to Sydney and to the rest of the world that way,” Dr Watson said.    

The Asia Development Bank is one of the financial backers of the Nauru project. 

“ADB is involved in very early discussions with the government of Nauru to explore possible options to help fund an undersea cable to deliver low-cost, high-quality internet service,” a spokesperson said in a statement. 

“The details of the connection arrangement and funding sources will be determined in due course.” 

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade did not response to the ABC’s questions about Nauru, but pointed to Australian investments in a cable for Palau and a design and feasibility study into a cable for Timor-Leste

“Australia is investing in telecommunications infrastructure, connectivity, and economic growth across the region and will continue to discuss this with partners,” a spokesperson said in a statement. 

Mr Pryke said the specific security issues were hard to pinpoint, but there was “clearly [a] game of influence” being played. 

“In a short period of time, we’ve seen Chinese state enterprise start to dominate the top end of the infrastructure sector in the Pacific region and engage in some investments that have really made the West quite worried,” he said. 

“Australia and the West now want to provide viable alternatives to whatever China is offering in the region and also want to head off further dominance of Chinese state-owned enterprises in the infrastructure space in the Pacific, be it cables, wharfs, roads.”

‘The time has passed’ to exclude China 

Experts say, ultimately, this increased competition and attention from western allies like Australia will benefit Pacific nations. 

This week, those living in the Pacific told the ABC they “don’t really care” who owns Digicel, they just need better internet access and phone coverage.

While Chinese firms often bid to build infrastructure such as undersea cables for a lower cost, the quality is also often diminished, according to Mr Pryke.  

“The Pacific are wising up to China. They do recognise a lot of the quality of infrastructure they’ve received has been lacklustre from China so they are putting more pressure on Chinese businesses to put in reasonable bids,” he said. 

Huawei Marine built a domestic undersea cable in PNG and there are already concerns it is failing. 

“If you look around the region, Chinese businesses are now entrenched and are here to stay. In the future, how viable a prospect is it to just completely run your infrastructure projects in the Pacific without including China?” Mr Pryke said. 

“The time has passed to really be able to force them out.”  

ABC/Reuters 

Source: Thanks msn.com