The Office of Post and Telecommunications (OPT, or Office des Postes et Télécommunication) plays a dominant role in French Polynesia's market. They are responsible for all fixed line services, most mobile connections, and the majority of all Internet traffic. They wholly own Vini, the country's largest mobile carrier and ISP. Competitive mobile and broadband networks have made few inroads. Other carriers include Viti and Vodafone French Polynesia*.

A single international cable, Honotua, has connected Tahiti to Hawaii since 2010. For some of the life of the cable, all traffic was connected directly onwards to the United States, as connectivity to Honolulu and other cables landing in Hawaii was cost prohibitive. Today it is possible to connect directly from Honolulu to Tahiti. Within the island group, a Honotua-extension domestic submarine fibre connects Tahiti to Moorea, Huahine, Raiatea, and Bora Bora - however capacity on that cable is limited by both the age of the equipment in use and the distance of some spans of fibre.

In 2018 the government of French Polynesia began a significant new domestic project called Natitua. This 2500 km cable links Tahiti to Tuamotu - Rangiroa, Manihi, Takaroa, Kaukura, Arutua, Fakarava, Makemo, Hao,  Hiva Oa, and Nuku Hiva. 

Government and operators in French Polynesia understand their single path to the world via Honotua is tenuous, and an outage could be extremely disruptive to the economy. This has motivated their participation in the Manatua project, which will link French Polynesia to Samoa via the Cook Islands. From Samoa, OPT will be able to purchase onward capacity to the Internet via several different routes.

*Vodafone French Polynesia uses IP addresses from OPT, so does not appear in our carrier statistics.