There was skepticism about a working 144km link over the water, and the biggest concern of having only around 2-3m clearance over the water surface. Anyway, with no VSAT in country and the approaching network launch, it seemed to be the only solution to backhaul the 7 BTS?s from Tana Island.

The logistics was a nightmare, since on Erromango Island the infrastructure is nonexistent: no roads, no electricity, and no transportation. The equipment was shipped to Erromango Island by boat and a helicopter was used to transport the equipment from the bottom of the hill to the top.

The installation of the antenna mounts and 3m MW antennas on the tower was relatively easy due to 3 days without wind and the dishes were installed on the tower using ropes, pulley and local workforce.

We were not so lucky with the weather in Port-Vila: windy weather. After a week of waiting for better weather, we decide to try to lift up the first 3m MW dish. Due to strong wind, after we lifted half way we decided to bring it down. Fortunately the next day the wind calmed down and we put both 3m dishes in place.

With the antenna system in place, the Motorola PTP 600 installed and commissioned it was time to start the alignment of the link. The communication between Erromango and Port-Vila had to been done through a pair of satellite phones provided by Digicel and a connection was found relatively quickly.

After another 2 days of fine tuning we got maximum receive level on the system and the link was up and running, ready for network launch. Digicel used the link to backhaul the 7 BTS from Tana for some time before finally later installing a VSAT link due to increased stability.