Telephone links between Tonga and the wider world began to be reconnected on Wednesday, though restoring full Internet connectivity is likely to take a month or more according to the owner of the archipelago's sole subsea communications cable.

The explosion of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano, which has killed at least three people and sent tsunami waves across the Pacific, knocked out communications around the nation of about 105,000 people on Saturday.

Telecom operator Digicel said late on Wednesday it had managed to restore international calling capability, though Reuters was not immediately able to reach numbers in Tonga.

Full network services will not be available until the undersea cable is fixed, Digicel said. A specialist ship is aiming to embark from Port Moresby on a repair voyage over the weekend, said Samiuela Fonua, chairman of cable owner Tonga Cable Ltd.

But with eight or nine days’ sailing to collect equipment in Samoa, and then an uncertain journey toward the fault in the eruption area, he said it will be “lucky” if the job is done within a month.

“It could be longer than that,” he added on the telephone from Auckland where he has been co-ordinating the repair.

“The cables are actually around the volcanic zone. We don’t know ... whether they are intact or blown away or stuck somewhere underwater. We don’t know if it’s buried even deeper.”

Tonga’s government and the state-owned Tonga Communications Corp. could not be contacted.

The virtual communications blackout has made relief efforts, already challenged by the Covid-19 pandemic, even more difficult.

It also underscores the vulnerability of the subsea fibre-optic cables that have become the backbone of global telecoms. The $34 million Asian Development Bank and World Bank-funded cable was finished in 2018 and boosted Tonga’s Net speeds more than 30-fold, but is almost its sole link to the wider world