Prior to 1996, Telecommunications was a Government Department. The 1996 TELETOK Rules corporatized this service. TELETOK remained a monopoly since 1997.

TELETOK has been confronted with a formidable problem of deterioration of its network over the years. TELETOK upgraded its network system from the old PABX to a soft switch in 2014. The signaling protocol used in the past is no longer popular and this caused great difficulties in getting technical support services and spare parts in the market.
 
TELETOK upgraded its Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) multi-service access node (MSAN) equipment to ensure the provision of reliable services and ongoing outside support by Challenge Networks Australia in 2015. The upgrade initiates by local demands which increase POTS on landlines and ADSL on our fixed network. The upgrade was fully completed in late April 2016. Around the same time, TELETOK’s voice emergency system was also upgraded.

TELETOK had outages at times which completely disconnects sites from national and international links. This reaffirms the lesson that we are always vulnerable without full power and voice emergency systems on all island sites.

TELETOK has completed major capital projects on a 4G LTE mobile network (new ICT broadband platform), solar upgrade, emergency voice system (HF and VHF), and multicast in 2017. With the new broadband 4G LTE mobile network, digital bridges have been constructed between islands to international destinations. The government supports the LTE 4G project with $1.05m from its budget from 2015/2016 to 2016/2017. Other capital developments on domestic cable, submarine cable, national radio, OCS, equipment rooms, and offices have not factored in the financial plan but are ongoing projects.

TELETOK is now over 20 years old. It has shared difficulties and obstacles, and so have the experiences to learn from which helped in engineering this plan from a demand perspective.