The repair of the submarine cable damaged by the volcanic eruption near Tonga should take at least a month, according to New Zealand.

The US cable company SubCom announced that it would take "at least four weeks" for the connection between the Pacific state of Tonga, which was badly hit by a tsunami, to be restored to the outside world, the Foreign Ministry in New Zealand said on Wednesday.

The cable was severed in two places during the eruption of an underwater volcano on Saturday.

Reports from Tonga, which according to the government was hit by an "unprecedented catastrophe", are currently only sparse.

Communication with the rest of the world is mainly through satellite phones of foreign embassies in the capital, Nuku'alofa.

The local network operator Digicel had reported that it was now able to set up a 2G network again, at least locally.

It could therefore be a long time before international telephone calls are possible again.

Apparently two broken wires

According to this, there appear to be two different cable breaks in the lines connecting Tonga to the worldwide grid.

One is 37 kilometers from the nearest coast, the other is near the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano.

A repair ship from Papua New Guinea, thousands of kilometers away, is currently on its way.

Meanwhile, efforts to provide Tonga with a temporary broadband satellite connection appear to have stalled.

The boss of the operating company Kacific, Christian Patouraux, explained that the government had not yet contacted the company "to discuss our service".

The Singapore-based company is in principle ready to offer its services under a contract signed after the last cable break in 2019.

However, the previous government of Tonga failed to fulfill its part of the contract, which is why it is now subject to arbitration in Singapore.

"We have a simple message for the government of Tonga," said Patouraux nonetheless.

"We can help.

Please contact us."

The volcanic eruption on Saturday was one of the heaviest in decades and was still measurable in faraway Alaska.

Ash and acid rain fell widely in the Pacific.

The eruption led to tsunami waves that were still measurable on distant coasts from Japan to the USA.

At least three people died in Tonga.

In Peru, more than 10,000 kilometers away, two women drowned in unusually high waves.