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It is also the case in the Falkland Islands, where the horrendous de-facto ISP charges £110 a month for 100 GB [0] of data usage at a top download speed of 5 (f

It is also the case in the Falkland Islands, where the horrendous de-facto ISP charges £110 a month for 100 GB [0] of data usage at a top download speed of 5 (five, literal five [V in roman]) MBPS, while Starlink offers unlimited usage for £60 per month at an average download speed of 130 MBPS. We are still facing challenges due to an exclusive license government have with this company, known for their predatory conduct [1]... People here are having to use Chilean addresses to register the kits and pay for a mobile package. [0] https://www.sure.co.fk/broadband/broadband-packages/ https://www.sure.co.fk/broadband/broadband-packages/ [1] https://guernseypress.com/news/2024/10/02/sure-ordered-to-pay-back-115000-after-overcharging/ https://guernseypress.com/news/2024/10/02/sure-ordered-to-pa...

lxgr 2y ago
Is Starlink also officially prohibited like in Saint Helena [1]? Seems to be a very similar situation (down to the same ISP Sure!). That said, there I do somewhat see the benefits of giving a fibreoptics provider exclusivity for a while in such a small market. [1] https://www.sainthelena.gov.sh/2023/news/reminder-on-the-use-of-unlicensed-telecommunications-equipment/ https://www.sainthelena.gov.sh/2023/news/reminder-on-the-use..., previous discussion see also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37645945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37645945
- Havoc 2y ago
  For what it's worth Sure in Jersey (channel islands) was fantastic. 80ish bucks for symetrical unlimited gigabit
  - yardstick 2y ago
    Jersey is in a vastly different geographic situation. It’s super close to UK & Europe, so cost of trade is massively more economical than these other places in the middle of nowhere. Economies of scale work for small countries in populous first world regions.
- pelagicAustral 2y ago
  De facto it is... but importing the kit is not illegal. Government expects to charge a license of £5000 for each person wanting to use Starlink in an official (legal) way, and being able to justify the use of it as well... Fortunately, after a public petition, legislators are now willing to have a look into the obscene license fee... Time will tell.
  - lxgr 2y ago
    > Government expects to charge a license of £5000 for each person wanting to use Starlink Wait, what? What service is the government supposedly providing? The only remotely believable excuse for that IMO would be "we're using it exclusively to fund a fiberoptics cable for redundancy", but even that I would have a very hard time believing.
    - pelagicAustral 2y ago
      And I forgot the kicker, it's a yearly fee. Government is balls deep into Sure's spell... On top of that, they subsidize Sure with at least £1,000,000 a year since the Covid era... Sure is all revenue at this point, they are a predatory company with absolutely no excuses. Someone else commented that these 'good faith' ISPs are doing God's work on these remote islands, they are not, they are lining their pockets as much as they can, in many cases grabbing loads of money in subsidies. I will not be shocked if I were to find out that most of the infra was actually paid with tax payers money anyway. In a place like the Falklands, internet should be nationalized.
snodnipper 2y ago
Difficult situation. 5 MBPS was certainly better than nothing in the past...and yet the Sure business (now) appears largely obsolete with Starlink, Kuiper etc.
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  THis is something I worry about in rural NM. 3 local tribes just got a bit more than $20M for broadband infrastructure, and you have to ask ... as much as I hate Elon both before and after he went batshit insane, why not just use starlink? I mean, what justification can there be for putting in new wired infrastructure at this point?
  - wmf 2y ago
    Over a lifetime time scale, fiber will be the same price or cheaper than Starlink but 10x faster. Most people won't notice the performance difference and fiber takes years to install while Starlink is minutes.
  - bmicraft 2y ago
    Besides he other argument, from what I've heard starlink seems extremely very unreliable compared to fiber
    - bigfatkitten 2y ago
      In my experience, this is mostly a function of location. With a clear view of the sky, I've found it to be rock solid. It is extremely sensitive to obstructions. A small tree branch with a handful of leaves on it will cause intermittent dropouts if it is between your terminal and a spacecraft.
layer8 2y ago
> 5 Mbps Less than a year ago, relatives of mine in rural France still only had around 1.5 Mbps via ADSL. Video chat was borderline impossible. YouTube wasn’t possible in real time (i.e. buffering took significantly longer than the runtime).
- rozap 2y ago
  This is how it is in semi rural Olympia, WA. I'm about 20 minutes from the state capitol, but the only options are 1.5mbps ADSL, or starlink. 4g/5g arrived last year, which is a great backup when starlink is down (frequent).
  - panopticon 2y ago
    My situation is slightly different but also in semi-rural WA. I'm on Verizon Home 5g and it's way faster and more stable than Starlink. I'm always surprised when I talk to people that use Starlink who haven't considered cellular.
    - rozap 2y ago
      I should check on them again, at the time (nearly 3 years ago) when I was looking they didn't offer it in my area. But then I noticed AT&T and Verizon were showing full signal strength of LTE in the last few months. At this point my phone is better than starlink in terms of latency, throughput, reliability, and I wouldn't have to pay $120/m to a troll.
  - dghlsakjg 2y ago
    Its kind of wild that you are having issues with Starlink. Is it local geography or trees that are an issue? I'm a little farther north on Vancouver Island and I see basically perfect connectivity with my latest generation dish. If I go look at the stats in the app it shows small losses of connectivity, but I've never noticed on a video call or anything.
    - notatoad 2y ago
_zagj 2y ago
Do you actually live in the Falklands? That's pretty neat.
- pelagicAustral 2y ago
  I do indeed =)
  - Klonoar 2y ago
    Just passed through on a ship but wasn’t able to dock at Stanley. Y’all should build a port. ;) /s I do wanna go back and see it though
    - pelagicAustral 2y ago
      They've been talking about building a port for ages... Money is an issue. For now they want to keep some form of floating structure going, like the same we have (FIPASS), but less rust.
teruakohatu 2y ago
This is the sad situation in many Pacific nations. ISPs charge a fortune (an absolute not relative fortune) for internet services to very low income populations. Starlink is of course banned. Meanwhile not far away in New Zealand, with a much wealthier population Starlink is prolific in rural areas. I am sure it’s also super popular in rural Australia.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  How do you ban something that is in the sky?
  - jdminhbg 2y ago
    You ban the importation of satellite dishes, and you don’t let Starlink build ground stations. You can still get around this, just like people still import drugs, but you can make it harder.
  - sangnoir 2y ago
    Try broadcasting on a licensed frequency without a license and find out... If the terminals were completely passive, finding smuggled terminals would be much harder.
    - fnordpiglet 2y ago
      Given how tightly beam formed starlink dishes are I wonder how easy they are to locate from any distance outside their transmission vector
  - bigfatkitten 2y ago
    "In the sky" does not mean "free from regulation." End users of terminal equipment are still subject to the regulations of the state in which they are located. The ITU Radio Regulations (via national legislation) create obligations on satellite operators to ensure that they do not cause harmful interference to other states' services or to violate those states' sovereignty.
- 2y ago
guybedo 2y ago
As a resident of a small pacific country where ISP charges >$100/month for relatively low quality of service, i sure can understand the problem and how interesting Starlink looks like. But one thing to keep in mind, is that usually ISPs in small countries can't compete on price because they don't have enough scale and enough customers, in the end they just can't compete with a juggernaut like Starlink. Although as a customer i'd love to just use Starlink and pay less for better quality of service, these local ISPs are important actors of the local economy. If these companies shutdown because of international competition, it's money going to the US, and the local economy taking a hit ...
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > these local ISPs are important actors of the local economy. If these companies shutdown because of international competition, it's money going to the US, and the local economy taking a hit This is a pretty terrible justification for maintaining obsolete infrastructure.
  - Daishiman 2y ago
    It's obsolete until Elon goes into a fit an decides for whatever reason he doesn't like you.
    - Mountain_Skies 2y ago
      Spinning off Starlink into its own publicly traded company has been talked about for quite a while. I believe even Musk has mentioned it. If that were to happen, especially if Musk wasn't the majority shareholder and/or head of the company, his personal quirks would cease to matter. But you'd still have to be in the good graces of whoever happened to be in control of the United States at the time.
      - Daishiman 2y ago
        Historically speaking it is never in the interests of any country to be 100% beholden to a US corporation with high political motivations and an unstable CEO.
labster 2y ago
Just run an undersea cable to Argentina, easy peasy. Argentina should be more than willing to help out their fellow citizens in the Malvinas, right?
- pelagicAustral 2y ago
  Nice one. I think recently, we stand a better chance to get fiber from Antarctica: https://www.goremagallanes.cl/wordpress/anuncian-proyecto-que-busca-impulsar-cable-de-fibra-optica-entre-magallanes-y-la-antartica-chilena/ https://www.goremagallanes.cl/wordpress/anuncian-proyecto-qu...
  - 0x1ch 2y ago
    FYI your URL redirects to spam or tries to.

lxgr 2y ago

Is Starlink also officially prohibited like in Saint Helena [1]? Seems to be a very similar situation (down to the same ISP Sure!). That said, there I do somewhat see the benefits of giving a fibreoptics provider exclusivity for a while in such a small market. [1] https://www.sainthelena.gov.sh/2023/news/reminder-on-the-use-of-unlicensed-telecommunications-equipment/ https://www.sainthelena.gov.sh/2023/news/reminder-on-the-use..., previous discussion see also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37645945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37645945

Havoc 2y ago
For what it's worth Sure in Jersey (channel islands) was fantastic. 80ish bucks for symetrical unlimited gigabit
- yardstick 2y ago
  Jersey is in a vastly different geographic situation. It’s super close to UK & Europe, so cost of trade is massively more economical than these other places in the middle of nowhere. Economies of scale work for small countries in populous first world regions.
pelagicAustral 2y ago
De facto it is... but importing the kit is not illegal. Government expects to charge a license of £5000 for each person wanting to use Starlink in an official (legal) way, and being able to justify the use of it as well... Fortunately, after a public petition, legislators are now willing to have a look into the obscene license fee... Time will tell.
- lxgr 2y ago
  > Government expects to charge a license of £5000 for each person wanting to use Starlink Wait, what? What service is the government supposedly providing? The only remotely believable excuse for that IMO would be "we're using it exclusively to fund a fiberoptics cable for redundancy", but even that I would have a very hard time believing.
  - pelagicAustral 2y ago
    And I forgot the kicker, it's a yearly fee. Government is balls deep into Sure's spell... On top of that, they subsidize Sure with at least £1,000,000 a year since the Covid era... Sure is all revenue at this point, they are a predatory company with absolutely no excuses. Someone else commented that these 'good faith' ISPs are doing God's work on these remote islands, they are not, they are lining their pockets as much as they can, in many cases grabbing loads of money in subsidies. I will not be shocked if I were to find out that most of the infra was actually paid with tax payers money anyway. In a place like the Falklands, internet should be nationalized.

snodnipper 2y ago

Difficult situation. 5 MBPS was certainly better than nothing in the past...and yet the Sure business (now) appears largely obsolete with Starlink, Kuiper etc.

PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
THis is something I worry about in rural NM. 3 local tribes just got a bit more than $20M for broadband infrastructure, and you have to ask ... as much as I hate Elon both before and after he went batshit insane, why not just use starlink? I mean, what justification can there be for putting in new wired infrastructure at this point?
- wmf 2y ago
  Over a lifetime time scale, fiber will be the same price or cheaper than Starlink but 10x faster. Most people won't notice the performance difference and fiber takes years to install while Starlink is minutes.
- bmicraft 2y ago
  Besides he other argument, from what I've heard starlink seems extremely very unreliable compared to fiber
  - bigfatkitten 2y ago
    In my experience, this is mostly a function of location. With a clear view of the sky, I've found it to be rock solid. It is extremely sensitive to obstructions. A small tree branch with a handful of leaves on it will cause intermittent dropouts if it is between your terminal and a spacecraft.

layer8 2y ago

> 5 Mbps Less than a year ago, relatives of mine in rural France still only had around 1.5 Mbps via ADSL. Video chat was borderline impossible. YouTube wasn’t possible in real time (i.e. buffering took significantly longer than the runtime).

rozap 2y ago
This is how it is in semi rural Olympia, WA. I'm about 20 minutes from the state capitol, but the only options are 1.5mbps ADSL, or starlink. 4g/5g arrived last year, which is a great backup when starlink is down (frequent).
- panopticon 2y ago
  My situation is slightly different but also in semi-rural WA. I'm on Verizon Home 5g and it's way faster and more stable than Starlink. I'm always surprised when I talk to people that use Starlink who haven't considered cellular.
  - rozap 2y ago
    I should check on them again, at the time (nearly 3 years ago) when I was looking they didn't offer it in my area. But then I noticed AT&T and Verizon were showing full signal strength of LTE in the last few months. At this point my phone is better than starlink in terms of latency, throughput, reliability, and I wouldn't have to pay $120/m to a troll.
- dghlsakjg 2y ago
  Its kind of wild that you are having issues with Starlink. Is it local geography or trees that are an issue? I'm a little farther north on Vancouver Island and I see basically perfect connectivity with my latest generation dish. If I go look at the stats in the app it shows small losses of connectivity, but I've never noticed on a video call or anything.
  - notatoad 2y ago

_zagj 2y ago

Do you actually live in the Falklands? That's pretty neat.

pelagicAustral 2y ago
I do indeed =)
- Klonoar 2y ago
  Just passed through on a ship but wasn’t able to dock at Stanley. Y’all should build a port. ;) /s I do wanna go back and see it though
  - pelagicAustral 2y ago
    They've been talking about building a port for ages... Money is an issue. For now they want to keep some form of floating structure going, like the same we have (FIPASS), but less rust.

teruakohatu 2y ago

This is the sad situation in many Pacific nations. ISPs charge a fortune (an absolute not relative fortune) for internet services to very low income populations. Starlink is of course banned. Meanwhile not far away in New Zealand, with a much wealthier population Starlink is prolific in rural areas. I am sure it’s also super popular in rural Australia.

scarface_74 2y ago
How do you ban something that is in the sky?
- jdminhbg 2y ago
  You ban the importation of satellite dishes, and you don’t let Starlink build ground stations. You can still get around this, just like people still import drugs, but you can make it harder.
- sangnoir 2y ago
  Try broadcasting on a licensed frequency without a license and find out... If the terminals were completely passive, finding smuggled terminals would be much harder.
  - fnordpiglet 2y ago
    Given how tightly beam formed starlink dishes are I wonder how easy they are to locate from any distance outside their transmission vector
- bigfatkitten 2y ago
  "In the sky" does not mean "free from regulation." End users of terminal equipment are still subject to the regulations of the state in which they are located. The ITU Radio Regulations (via national legislation) create obligations on satellite operators to ensure that they do not cause harmful interference to other states' services or to violate those states' sovereignty.
2y ago

guybedo 2y ago

As a resident of a small pacific country where ISP charges >$100/month for relatively low quality of service, i sure can understand the problem and how interesting Starlink looks like. But one thing to keep in mind, is that usually ISPs in small countries can't compete on price because they don't have enough scale and enough customers, in the end they just can't compete with a juggernaut like Starlink. Although as a customer i'd love to just use Starlink and pay less for better quality of service, these local ISPs are important actors of the local economy. If these companies shutdown because of international competition, it's money going to the US, and the local economy taking a hit ...

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> these local ISPs are important actors of the local economy. If these companies shutdown because of international competition, it's money going to the US, and the local economy taking a hit This is a pretty terrible justification for maintaining obsolete infrastructure.
- Daishiman 2y ago
  It's obsolete until Elon goes into a fit an decides for whatever reason he doesn't like you.
  - Mountain_Skies 2y ago
    Spinning off Starlink into its own publicly traded company has been talked about for quite a while. I believe even Musk has mentioned it. If that were to happen, especially if Musk wasn't the majority shareholder and/or head of the company, his personal quirks would cease to matter. But you'd still have to be in the good graces of whoever happened to be in control of the United States at the time.
    - Daishiman 2y ago
      Historically speaking it is never in the interests of any country to be 100% beholden to a US corporation with high political motivations and an unstable CEO.

labster 2y ago

Just run an undersea cable to Argentina, easy peasy. Argentina should be more than willing to help out their fellow citizens in the Malvinas, right?

pelagicAustral 2y ago
Nice one. I think recently, we stand a better chance to get fiber from Antarctica: https://www.goremagallanes.cl/wordpress/anuncian-proyecto-que-busca-impulsar-cable-de-fibra-optica-entre-magallanes-y-la-antartica-chilena/ https://www.goremagallanes.cl/wordpress/anuncian-proyecto-qu...
- 0x1ch 2y ago
  FYI your URL redirects to spam or tries to.