Marineforum reported on 21 January from the damaged submarine cable on Tonga - an example of critical infrastructure.
And now the repair is being delayed by the special ship. However, it won't arrive there for another week, so the repairs can't begin before then. Who lays important telecommunications infrastructure where in the South Pacific is also a geopolitical question. The hope for the special ship "Reliance" is also the hope of having Internet access again soon.
Since the eruption of the Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha'apai volcano on 15 January, the connection has been interrupted. Tonga was completely cut off from the outside world for several days, but telephone calls via satellite are now possible again. However, the bandwidth provided by the satellite is only a fraction of the capacity of the undersea cable. Tonga will only have fast internet again once the cable has been repaired. It will probably be another month before the cable is repaired.
The problem for Tonga and its approximately 100,000 inhabitants is that their country is connected to a single cable. It was laid in 2013 and runs 827 kilometres along the seabed to Fiji, where it is connected to intercontinental cables. Fiji is a hub for internet connections in the South Pacific. From here, cables run to Sydney in Australia and via Hawaii to the USA.
Sources: NZZ, Wikipedia, Telegeography.com
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As is so often the case, the Achilles heel lies in logistics. It's great that you can localise the point of breakage very quickly these days. But then comes the necessary repair.