The Kingdom of Tonga, a small island nation in the South Pacific, has come a long way in terms of internet development. The country’s first connection to the internet was established in 1996, but it wasn’t until the early 2000s that the internet became widely available to the public.
In the early days of internet development in Tonga, the government played a key role in establishing the infrastructure necessary for internet connectivity. The Tonga Communications Corporation (TCC), a state-owned telecommunications company, was responsible for building the country’s first internet backbone. This backbone connected Tonga to the global internet via satellite links, which were expensive and had limited bandwidth.