Nauru is a small country in the Pacific, and the country went from being the richest to being the poorest in one sweep due to the depletion of phosphate rock, and its communications company went bankrupt and communications stopped for a while. As government-owned communication facilities, cables (which are now exposed above ground) that were installed by Japan 30 to 40 years ago are still used, and the performance is only a few tens of kbps and unstable even for communications within the LAN.
So, we built a resource center where paper-based resources (e.g., books) were also included, in addition to the telecenter function, and an optical fiber cable network. Then, we demonstrated replacing a part of the Government's LAN with an optical fiber network, and trained human resources. Staff members of the Government's ICT Department performed all tasks, from design, excavation, wiring of land lines and aerial lines, and fusion of cables to the management of servers, and they have been continuously promoting the use of ICT in Nauru, as well as the operation, maintenance, and improvement of the domestic communication networks. With this demonstration research, stable 1-Gbps communications became available at once in the country.
Communication station building and communication cables that have been used. For cables, stainless pipes, and inexpensive and durable M-PAC are used due to a lack of specific knowledge for building. We donated fusion devices, and held a training course so that staff could do the work.
In this project, the total length is approximately 6 km. Seven locations, including the Government building, resource center, school, hospital, and clinic, are connected. Since then, the number of connections has been gradually increasing.