6 ms·
> It has come to the attention of the St Helena Government that members of the public may have acquired, imported and be currently using terminals, such as Star
by kickofline 3y ago
> It has come to the attention of the St Helena Government that members of the public may have acquired, imported and be currently using terminals, such as Starlink, for the purposes of internet connectivity. Using such terminals is in contravention of the exclusivity of current telecommunications licencing arrangements made under section 3(4) of the Telecommunications Ordinance 1989. From 1 November 2023 anyone using such a terminal will be liable to be subject to a ‘ceaseand desist’ order issued on behalf of the Government. A cease and desist order is an instruction to stop using terminals, and continue to refrain from using terminals, whilst the exclusivity of the current telecommunications licencing arrangements remain in force. Any breach of such a cease and desist order may result in the confiscation of the equipment.
Starlink seems to be illegal to protect the government’s investment in a monopoly on the main satellite.
- wffurr 3y agoWhy bother with Starlink if the fiberoptic subsea cable is live now?
- ZeWaka 3y agoIt's not rolled out yet: http://sainthelenaisland.info/communications.htm#maestrotechnologies http://sainthelenaisland.info/communications.htm#maestrotech...
- justrealist 3y ago> Due to delays in finalising designs for the new network, it is now accepted that it will not be completed by January 2024 If they haven't finalized the design, I'd say they've got a ways to go.
- wffurr 3y agoIs that for the cable or FTTP deployment on the island itself? Seems like they could at least get much better mobile internet rates using the subsea cable instead of satellite for backhaul. I had a very difficult time trying to figure out if that subsea cable was online or not.
- Tijdreiziger 3y agoPer the ISP (Sure), it does appear to have been rolled out: https://www.sure.co.sh/assets/Banner-Links/PRESS-RELEASE-Connecting-to-Equiano-Final-Updated-v3-3.pdf https://www.sure.co.sh/assets/Banner-Links/PRESS-RELEASE-Con...
- fidotron 3y agoYou still have to run the cable the last mile, even on an island.
- Tijdreiziger 3y agoNot necessarily, we have wireless technologies. Stringing cables along poles could well be cheaper, though.
- Scoundreller 3y agoI’m thinking with 4G, 5g, one day 6g and one day 7g, physical data infra’s days are numbered or will become a premium product at the residential level. Except in Canada and elsewhere where the mobile and wireline providers are the same and deliberately keep mobile pricing high enough to disincentivize cord cutting.
- wffurr 3y agoNone of those create more radio spectrum. I don't see a real replacement for wireline fiber and ethernet ever.
- Scoundreller 3y agoEach "g" let us modulate more data in the same channel size. Spectrum re-use via smaller cells is virtually limitless. And we're re-allocating more spectrum for 2-way data regularly.
- BenjiWiebe 3y agoBut if the cells keep getting smaller, at some point it will be cheaper to just bury that one fiber to beat out 12G plus the next 5 generations, rather than buy another cell to cover that one household.
- lxgr 3y agoRedundancy is also nice – given how remote Saint Helena is, I could imagine repairs taking quite some time.
- KennyBlanken 3y agoBecause the government seems highly regressive and is almost certainly controlling and monitoring the one cable they've allowed?
- alwa 3y agoI’m curious where you get that impression. From their public communications, they seem to me like a pretty chill bunch. And from the size of the island, I’m not sure the advantage of snooping on the wires versus just gossiping around town. That’s assuming you could find and pay enough qualified staff to do the analysis, given that “anything to do with a computer” is on the “shortage occupation” list that automatically qualifies you for a work permit. [0] Even in this hand-wavy announcement clutching their pearls at Starlink, they were careful to build in an extra few months for people to finish importing and hiding their Starlink terminals before they might start sending sternly-worded letters... [0] https://www.sainthelena.gov.sh/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Shortage-Occupation-List-and-Guidance-2021.pdf https://www.sainthelena.gov.sh/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Sh... (PDF)
- nycdatasci 3y agoRelatedly, it's worth watching the entire Bill Gurley talk at the recent All-In Summit. Edit: Updating link to jump to the relevant section of the talk. https://youtu.be/F9cO3-MLHOM?t=397 https://youtu.be/F9cO3-MLHOM?t=397
- syndicatedjelly 3y agoWhat's the connection?
- nycdatasci 3y agoThe chat covers some egregious examples of regulatory capture in the US. Part of the focus is the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which purported to increase competition but in fact accomplished the opposite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996
- greg_gorrell 3y agoThanks for sharing! I haven't come across this podcast yet and it looks like some great content.
- alejohausner 3y agoAwesome! Thanks for the link. Ending regulatory capture is the main plank in RFK Jr's presidential campaign. He's mentioned the FDA, NIH, EPA, the CIA and the military industrial complex, but I haven't heard him talk about capture of the telecom regulators. Sorry for the political ad, but I'm frustrated by news articles that say "voters don't want Biden or Trump", but fail to mention RFK's campaign. (stepping off the soapbox) Oh, and did you hear that neither New Hampshire's nor Iowa's delegates to the Democratic national convention will be counted? Or rather, they'll automatically go to Biden. I kid you not. (I'll just show myself out)
- yieldcrv 3y agoneither RFK or Vivek Ramaswamy have a chance if you would like candidates like that to have a chance, petition your state to allow non party members to vote in primary elections partisans of any party are a now minority in this country but the growing number of independents dont know it yet and have no representation, while their participation in the primaries would smooth out the candidate selection in the mean time, fawning over non consensus candidates are a waste of time it is accurate for there to be frustration over the two predictable candidates because rabid partisans are going to pretend that the rest of the population have a choice (as long as its the "choice" they like)
- bigbillheck 3y agoAlternate take: "the current licensee will sue us if we allow Starlink".
- Scoundreller 3y agoIt’s sad how $$$ legacy satellite services worked almost everywhere (Inmarsat, iridium, globalstar, even ham/hf), but now that it’s within reach of the poors, they get heavily regulated to oblivion.
- BenjiWiebe 3y agoSeems to me that ham radio doesn't fit in that list.
- Scoundreller 3y agopretty sure the radios came first and then the regulations came after as it became more available. Depends who you ask whether it's been regulated to oblivion.
- mcv 3y agoThat could mean they don't plan to strictly enforce this ban, but are merely contractually obliged to officially ban it.
- jimkleiber 3y agoI wonder if other countries will (or have) ban Starlink for censorship reasons. Or frankly, lack of censorship control. So much of our governance, if not all, is based on geographic sovereignty, and satellites can supersede that. I hope we finally get more global governance to deal with more and more global issues.
- Tijdreiziger 3y agoI remember reading that Starlink routes traffic via base stations in the subscriber’s own country, in order not to anger regulators. If you think about it it makes sense; otherwise governments could just ban the sale of Starlink equipment for violating the law.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoFrankly it would be easier to enforce at the payments layer. Governments have a lot greater control over their financial system than the movement of physical goods (see war on drugs where drugs move freely despite massive interdiction efforts but money is done through currency as integrated financial products are easily monitored and controlled)
- pcl 3y agoTelcos do pretty much the same -- US SIMs in China receive different Great Firewall treatment than Chinese SIMs, and I've seen some Chinese SIMs / phones on some cell networks in the US get routed back through the Great Firewall. Which is IMO pretty disgusting on the part of the US telcos, but sorta functionally the same as what you say Starlink does.
- Scoundreller 3y agoCan be seen as a positive or a negative: You can still access your home country’s Netflix/streaming content. Log into websites that might geo-block (Homedepot.com blocks Europe…), log into work without security admins losing their mind about a “suspicious foreign access”. Downside is that ads won’t localize into a language you don’t understand. I love it when that happens when travelling.
- legitster 3y agoThere was a line, I believe in the Machineries of Freedom, that says the goal of "effective" libertarian politics is not to change laws - it's to design disruptive technologies that make existing laws irrelevant. We saw one version of this with Uber and Airbnb, essentially blowing up taxi and rental regulations, respectively. This is happening with AI, where regulation is hopelessly lost in its current state. We have seen this (unsuccessfully so far) with finance and the blockchain. And arguably this is a legacy which traces its way through industrial revolution (which saw the breakup of monarchy's monopoly on labor and land) or even the stirrup or the sword. Breaking existing rules and being unregulatable is probably an intentional point of Starlink.
- GolfPopper 3y ago"This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?" -A Man For All Seasons (1966)
- quickthrower2 3y agoDepends: are we cutting them all at once?
- btilly 3y agoThe context of the quote is a debate about whether to give the Devil the benefit of law. And yes, it was cutting them all at once to get at the Devil. You can watch the original at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMqReTJkjjg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMqReTJkjjg. (I picked the longer version at 3 minutes that includes the leadup to why the debate happened.)
- lxgr 3y ago> Breaking existing rules and being unregulatable is probably an intentional point of Starlink. Looking at Starlink's coverage map (for stationary service at least), they seem to very much be playing by the rules (i.e. international laws and regulations regarding satellite communication services): https://www.starlink.com/map https://www.starlink.com/map A "break rules and become unregulateable" approach would not have service boundaries corresponding to political borders.
- yieldcrv 3y agoThis is a good reason for the new King of the UK to override that territory’s law
- teh_klev 3y agoThe new King has no powers to do anything like that. It'd be up to the British government to stick their noses in, if at all possible.
- oh_sigh 3y agoDoes a monopoly make sense here? Pre starlink, there was probably a huge cost to bring internet to the island, and those doing so wanted to have some form of protection in order to confidently invest the capital to do so.
- lxgr 3y agoYeah, I could totally imagine some long-term bandwidth lease funding the launch of a geostationary satellite. But enforcing that monopoly against private users, i.e. not resellers/ISPs, seems somewhat extreme.
- hinkley 3y agoA number of years ago NYC decriminalized ownership of beehives, and a journalist interviewed a bunch of people who had them anyway. They all had schemes to hide their hives. One guy made it look like an AC condenser, and went so far as buying himself work clothes to make him look like a repairman. If you make it out of the right materials, it shouldn’t be too hard to conceal a starlink antenna without destroying the gain.
- quercusa 3y agoThe Mystery of Red Brooklyn Honey: https://us.latinhoneyshop.com/blogs/news/the-mystery-of-red-brooklyn-honey-and-why-local-honey-is-not-always-good-for-you https://us.latinhoneyshop.com/blogs/news/the-mystery-of-red-...
- russdill 3y agoDirect link: https://www.sainthelena.gov.sh/2023/news/use-of-unlicenced-telecommunications-equipment/ https://www.sainthelena.gov.sh/2023/news/use-of-unlicenced-t...
- yencabulator 3y agoIt's extra delicious when read in context of these quotes: > In the summer of 2016, the United Nations declared access to internet is a human right. While we are just beginning to realize the internet’s potential for our island and with the prospects of a high speed cable arriving on our shores, perhaps now is the time to re-evaluate the importance of information technology for EVERYONE. Can we truly reach our fullest potential if access to the World Wide Web is available only to those who can afford it? > Inhabitants of the tiny tropical island of St Helena pay through the nose for an internet service that mainlanders would have considered painfully slow even during the pre-Netflix era. > St Helena’s isolation and reliance on satellite technology, means that internet services are limited and expensive compared to many countries, and are a major barrier to development. The top residential package offered in St Helena provides 13.3 megabytes of data at a speed of 1.5 megabits per second, and costs £180.50 per month.