Lodge a Complaint

The Commission is mandated by the Telecommunications Act (2009) to regulate the telecommunications sector and as such, maintains its policy of assisting complainants to address complaints directly to their service provider, as the first step towards resolving individual problems. However, the Commission can be requested or may, of its own volition, carry out investigations into matters related to market, service providers, services, anti-competition or other such issues.

Type of Complaint

(TCSI): Solomon Islands Submarine Cable Company (SISCC) will be offering free additional bandwidth to telecommunications operators in the country.

This will be a straight 50% increase in bandwidth over current contract bandwidth at no additional cost to the operator.

The measure is part of a $309 million economic stimulus package announced this week in Honiara by the Government, designed to address the impacts of the corona virus (COVID-19) pandemic.

The additional package being offered by SISCC is part of the stimulus package’s soft measures, which are immediate actions aimed at ensuring the economy continues to function during the crisis.

Solomon Islands declared a state of public emergency on 25th March this year and the emergency period has been extended by Order from the Prime Minister to July 2020.

The submarine cable company’s relief assistance will cover the extended emergency period in anticipation of increased Government and retail usage.

Solomon Islands has been forecasted to achieve a -4.9% GDP growth this year by the Central Bank of Solomon Islands (CBSI), spurring the Government into a series of response actions.

This includes the announcement of the economic stimulus package which aims to ease the fallout of the pandemic on local businesses and households.

SISCC’s relief offer under the package is designed to cushion the economic impact of the corona virus on telecommunications operators as businesses throughout the country face a scale-down in operations.

Additionally, the relief package is expected to boost the work of the Emergency Telecommunications Cluster, of which the SISCC is a member.

The Cluster is part of the Government’s emergency response measures to the pandemic, operating under the direction of the Cluster’s Standard Operating Procedures with guidance from the Infrastructure National Disaster Operations Committee (N-DOC).

The Cluster is made up of Solomon Islands’ telecommunications regulator, TCSI, Government telecommunications departments and local retail telecommunications service providers.

Its core function is to allow business continuity in the private sector and to allow public sector departments, units and agencies to carry out their responsibilities of service delivery.

The Solomon Islands Submarine Cable Company Limited (SISCC) is a locally registered company that owns and operates submarine cable services in the Solomon Islands territory.