The Solomon Tower Limited (STL) officially opened its new office on Friday at the Solomon Post Office compound in Honiara.
STL is a newly created company under the Companies Act. It has the support of the Ministry of Communication and Aviation (MCA) and the Ministry of Finance and Treasury (MFT).
Delivering his remarks at the opening ceremony, Finance Minister Manasseh Sogavare said, the premises was selected as STL office because it is closer to where everyone do business and its implementing partners for the Solomon Islands National Broadband Infrastructure Project (SINBIP).
“The office is, of course, closer to the heart of the government and the service providers and shareholders are just a walking distance from the office, therefore, it’s an ideal location.”
He took the time to thank the Solomon Islands Postal Cooperation Management for agreeing to host this important office at their premises.
“This is a very important moment for STL and its development to having a fixed address to carry out its business,” Minister Sogovare said.
He added that STL is tasked to coordinate and provide technical support to the MCA as the lead ministry in implementing the SINBIP.
Minister Sogavare added, STL will be mandated to manage and lease out the towers to operators in a commercial arrangement to raise revenue and maintain the towers; this goes back a long way, from a humble beginning with only two administrative staffs, STL is now a fully functional office with 12 full-time staff employed.
With the building of 161 towers around the country under the Broadband Infrastructure Project, Sogavare said the project has made progress despite the challenges and delays caused by land issues, misunderstanding amongst stakeholders and few community members who failed to realise the benefits of the project and the area our safeguard team are dealing with head-on and that must continue.
The first ground-breaking ceremony was held at Salih Tower on 2nd August 2023 and the team has just completed and put on air 14 communication towers.
Currently, 45 sites out of the 46 tower sites in Phase 1, in the three provinces; Guadalcanal, Central and Isabel Provinces are being worked on.
STL’s main partner is Solomon Telecom to use their core networking and revenue-sharing arrangements.
Minister Sogavare said lessons are learned and the team is adjusting to make sure productivity is increased with more resources to be injected and at the same time still buy-in by the community we try to serve.
He said, the team is expected to start mobilising to Western Province and to Choiseul Province, at the end of the year and start Phase 2 of the project.
Around mid-2025 they plan to implement phase 3 that will cover Malaita, Makira and Temotu Provinces simultaneously and complete the 161 planned towers by the end of 2025,” Sogavare said.
He added that the aim of the project is to improve connectivity and access to internet services by people.
“This should help the public to benefit from e-health, e-education, e-commerce, e-payment systems and e-government and you put an ‘e’ on the front of anything and we will go.”
He said that other benefits of course that this project will bring for Solomon Islands is the achievement of the objectives of the Solomon Islands Government National Development Strategy and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
By AGNES MENANOPO
Solomon Star, Honiara
