National Addressing

National Addressing System FAQs

What the Project is about.

Solomon Islands Postal Corporation and the Ministry of Communication & Aviation is adopting a new “National Addressing System” to be deployed across the country after the official launching in early July 2017. Every country in the world already, should and must have a quality addressing and postcode system, these are essential systems for national infrastructure and the socio-economic development of a country. Solomon Islands does not currently have addressing system and it becomes a barrier to many facet of its economic activities. The Ministry of Communication partnering with Solomon Islands Postal Corporation is committed to adopt a new system to allow the country to be reached. This is all about this project.

Why do Solomon Post decided to Adopt What3Words?

Solomon Post had been searching for solution to connect citizens and to make-available countrywide infrastructure that can address everyone including those in very remote locations. If we continue with the street naming, we will never get the entire country covered with addresses. The post now adopt the system that uses technology to address every 3m*3m square throughout the Solomon Islands and even the entire world. By adopting what3words, we address every 3m*3m square in Solomon Islands. This is the basis of our decision to engage this system. The system can also use API to interface with almost any GIS system used in Solomon Islands such as mapinfo, argis, etc. etc.

How will the System Benefit the People in Solomon Islands?

Around 75% of the world [135 countries] suffers from inconsistent, complicated or inadequate addressing systems. This means that around 4 billion people are invisible; unable to report crime; unable to get deliveries or receive aid; unable to exercise many of their rights as citizens because they simply have no way to communicate where they live. Poor addressing in Solomon Islands hampers the growth and development of the nation. We want to give everyone in Solomon Islands the ability to talk about a precise location as easily as possible. Everyone and everywhere now has an address.

Using the System throughout the country, everyone will have a unique address.

What is Addressing System?

Addressing should be simple enough to understand, it is a matrix or underlying threads connecting all different actors and their activities, effectively functioning as a network of networks. In Solomon Islands and almost all other Pacific Island countries, addressing system is uncommon and is still in absent. Tonga had launched the what3words system ahead of us and we will be second in Pacific and the sixth in the entire world. Currently our addressing system only reaches post office boxes, physically located at the post offices.
How does the System Work?
What3Words is a Universal Addressing System based on a 3m*3m square global grid. Each of the 57 trillion 3m*3m squares in the world has been pre-allocated a fixed & unique 3 word address. The geocoder turns geographic coordinates into these 3 word addresses & vice-versa. The algorithm takes up less than 10mb, small enough to install on almost all smartphones and works across platforms and devices such as windows, mac, android or iphone. What3Words is a plug-in for businesses and individuals, via an API, to enhance their own products and services with simple and precise addressing. The latitude and longitude is the basis of the system. In simple; the 3 words addressing is based on GIS longitude and latitude readings but the geocoder turn those numeric characters into alpha-numeric characters to become a 3 words addresses easy for human brains to remember.

Most entities that will really benefit from the addressing system are: