Summary

  • In 1985, the FCC found that Pacific satellite capacity could cover projected demand for years, while cable circuits serving most major markets were already saturated.
  • It chose a fiber TPC-3 plan that included Guam, despite a cheaper route without Guam and debate about waiting until 1991.
  • The order was a facilities plan, not proof that the planned cable was built on schedule or that Internet service reached local users.

Every new route carried a question for ordinary ratepayers: should they help pay for a Guam landing whose strategic value its backers emphasized? The FCC put that burden into the same decision as route diversity, service quality, international partner acceptance and security, even while satellite capacity could cover overall forecasts. For users, the practical trade-off was another possible path against the cost of building it. The order records a planned choice, not an actual customer bill, outage or completed cable.

In its 1985 review, the Commission described roughly 70 per cent of US–Pacific Ocean Region traffic as travelling by satellite and 30 per cent by submarine cable. It also said that, except for routes serving Australia, New Zealand and Fiji, cable circuits to major markets were saturated. Those figures came from the FCC’s planning record, not independent traffic measurement. Aggregate spare capacity and a constrained route could therefore be true at the same time.

The FCC’s preferred Plan II-A (Modification 4) would connect the US mainland and Hawaii toward Japan and Guam through an undersea branching unit. A wider system would continue through Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and the Philippines, returning to Guam, with a branch to Taiwan. The mainland–Japan, mainland–Guam and Guam–Philippines portions were planned for service in 1988; other segments could follow in 1990 or later.

That layout competed with a less expensive non-ring plan that omitted Guam. The Guam branch mattered to the Department of Defense and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration for security and commercial reasons. It also raised a plain ratepayer question: should ordinary users help finance a landing point that had a strategic rationale? The FCC weighed that burden against route diversity, service quality, acceptance by foreign carrier correspondents, competition between satellites and cables, and industrial policy. It concluded that the balance favoured fiber in 1988 and the Guam-inclusive plan.

The decision did not mean that Pacific communications had run out of capacity. Nor did it itself install a cable. It recorded a choice about the physical paths that carriers should be allowed and encouraged to build. The FCC’s order is evidence of the plan and its rationale; planned dates are not proof of construction, operation or Internet access for any particular community.

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