An Important Hawai‘i Nonprofit That You Probably Haven’t Heard Of

The Pacific Telecommunications Council helps set the pace for digital infrastructure throughout the Pacific.

Thousands of C-suite executives, researchers, entrepreneurs and government leaders convene each year to help plan what’s next for satellites, undersea cables and much of the hardware that makes the Internet ubiquitous. Instead of being held in Silicon Valley, London or Aspen, this global gathering of the Pacific Telecommunications Council is always held on O‘ahu, yet few locals are aware of the PTC.

Founded in 1978 and based in Honolulu, it’s a nonprofit membership organization committed to advancing information and communications technologies globally, with an emphasis on the Pacific Ocean and Pacific Rim.

“Our organization and our members focus on satellites, subsea cables, data centers, landing stations, mobile, fiber … we have members across the entire industry,” says Brian Moon, who has been PTC’s CEO since 2022. “As we’ve evolved, we’ve started to use the term ‘digital infrastructure,’ but it’s essentially telecommunications and connectivity.”

PTC has 12 full-time staff, some working on O‘ahu and others on the continent.

Members include megawatt names like AT&T, Starlink, Meta and Oracle; Islands-based companies like Hawaiian Telcom and Hawaii Pacific Teleport; and entities such as Japanese public broadcaster NHK and Fiji’s Ministry of Communications. There are more than 400 member companies, with 4,000 people total participating in the organization.

One member organization, Google, recently announced plans for a $1 billion project called Pacific Connect, which will create new fiber-optic internet subsea cables and link hubs throughout the Pacific, including Japan, Hawai‘i, Fiji, Australia, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.

“The bigger picture is it not only increases connectivity and reliability of internet on the Hawaiian Islands, but will also become literally the lifelines to Pacific islands that many of us haven’t heard of,” says Moon. “When you talk about opportunities of what the internet can do, what technology can do, that’s what our organization’s mission is. When you can connect more and more people, especially the next generation, that opens opportunities, whether it is for remote learning, access to digital health or remote work. Some of these locations, we’re not talking about getting access to social media; they’re just trying to make a consistent phone call or start doing SMS messaging.”

“There are certain areas, Latin America and Africa, that are also going to be hotbeds of opportunity for the industry moving forward. But right now, there’s certainly a focus on the Pacific,” says Moon. “We’ve got companies like Google, who are investing a lot of resources financially. From a business opportunity, there are lots of people in the Pacific who aren’t connected, so it’s an opportunity to reach them. But it’s also an opportunity for the United States to connect with Asia.”

Annual Convening

PTC’s flagship event is its annual conference, which has grown into one of the industry’s most important meetings of the year. “It has become synonymous with the organization,” says Moon. “I like to call it the Davos of digital infrastructure.”

The PTC Conference is held at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, typically in the second or third week in January. Several thousand people fly in from all over the world, with attendees from China and Singapore rubbing elbows with badge-wearers from Finland and India and striking up conversations over a mai tai with people from Kenya and Nepal.

“It brings the people with the research and academic credentials together with the movers and shakers, the people who are actually doing things. And there aren’t that many times when those people are together in the same hotel, over the same few days, sharing ideas,” says David Lassner, president of the UH System. Lassner is a former chair of PTC’s board and a lifetime member.

Lassner notes that along with conference sessions, plenty of business is conducted on the sidelines. “The major corporations that work in this space, they just rent a lot of rooms, and they are setting them up for offices and conducting business meetings all day, and hosting parties for their clients.”

He says the conference is better known outside the Islands than in it. “I think it’s known to a niche group here, but most of the participation is from outside Hawai‘i,” he says. “And it’s kind of amazing that we have one of the major global events, year in and year out, taking place here, and most people have no idea that it’s going on. Everybody who’s deploying major telecommunications infrastructure, certainly in this hemisphere, but anywhere in the world really, gathers in Honolulu in January. I think for Hawai‘i, we should be very proud that we’re a place that brings these people together.”

This year, PTC added a mid-year conference called PTC’DC that will take place in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 5 and 6.

“This will be approximately 250 to 300 attendees, much more intimate, and it’s very specific,” explains Moon. “What I mean by that is, we are convening with the government – the policymakers, regulators – and we’re bringing them together with the audience that PTC is known for, which is the C-suite.” There are a lot of potential regulations regarding digital infrastructure, and the group wants to educate the lawmakers on the issues.

PTC also conducts webinars year-round on timely topics such as AI. It also has an initiative, PTC Beyond, that supports emerging digital infrastructure professionals aged 35 and younger.

“We’ve also partnered with an organization called the ITU, the International Telecommunications Union, specifically on a program called Girls in ICT (information and communications technology). It focuses on young women professionals, promoting opportunities and careers in telecom,” Moon says.

“This specific one is around the Pacific, so when you look at islands like Fiji, Tuvalu and others, there are so many bright young women who are just looking for an opportunity. Let’s get them connected. … Then you can become an engineer, then you can become whatever you want to be, but you need this foundation first.”