Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Saint Helena Island Communications

sainthelenaisland.info

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 149 posts

Re: Saint Helena Island Communications

#101

Post by toomuchtodo »

gambiting wrote: post #83
mikeortman wrote: post #46

The fact there is an internet monopoly barring residents to use other internet providers is sad, especially given the impact on the GDP of the island if proper high speed internet and technological resources are available. I have a feeling the government is doing the cease and desist as a hand wavy thing to make the internet company happy, but will put little if any effort in actually enforcing it (if there is even s…

>>The fact there is an internet monopoly barring residents to use other internet providers is sad I guess the deal was that if this company brings internet connectivity then they get exclusivity on the island for X number of years. I wish the article would get into more details about this deal. Edit: on second read, the article does actually. It mentions the exclusivity deal was meant to expire in 2022, but because o…

u/skrause mentions in another subthread that the government has commissioned a fiber optic network going live at the end of the year.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37651113

https://web.archive.org/web/20230925221524/http://www.indepe... (page 3)

Re: Saint Helena Island Communications

#102

Post by teh_klev »

yieldcrv wrote: post #24
kickofline wrote: post #6

> 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 usin…

This is a good reason for the new King of the UK to override that territory’s law

The 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.

Re: Saint Helena Island Communications

#104

Post by Tijdreiziger »

pcl wrote: post #38
Tijdreiziger wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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.

Telcos 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.

Actually with mobile roaming, I believe the implementation is that everything just gets tunneled back to your home carrier; so I think it is not so much the case that US carriers are deliberately discriminating Chinese traffic.

Re: Saint Helena Island Communications

#105

Post by jackson1442 »

cbsks wrote: post #56

Yikes! Internet is expensive! And there is only a single provider legally allowed to operate. 18£: 30GB. 5Mbps down, 1Mbps up 36£: 60GB. 5Mbps down, 1Mbps up 67£: unlimited. 10Mbps down, 1Mbps up 120£: unlimited. 20Mbps down, 1Mbps up https://www.sure.co.sh/assets/Banner-Links/Residential-Broad...

Notably you’re looking at the _enhanced_ packages, available starting next month. The current packages available are significantly worse! https://www.sure.co.sh/broadband/broadband-packages/

The highest tier offers a whopping 31GB of data at 2mbps for the low low price of £160

Re: Saint Helena Island Communications

#106

Post by yencabulator »

kickofline wrote: post #6

> 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 usin…

It'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.

Re: Saint Helena Island Communications

#107

Post by yencabulator »

capableweb wrote: post #39
Tijdreiziger wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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.

Seems unlikely that Starlink would put a base station on Saint Helena just to be able to serve some percentage of ~4000 population. Most likely the base station is somewhere else.

I wouldn't expect Starlink to serve remote ocean areas until after they have their space lasers working well and can transport the traffic to a continent.

Re: Saint Helena Island Communications

#108

Post by chongli »

dekhn wrote: post #62
warkdarrior wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The operators work for me. I get different results with and without '-napa -carolina -california'.

Truly weird: for me, -california won't suppress the top result (a map of St Helena California) but adding -carolina and -california removes the map and puts the wikipedia page for St Helena (the saint person). In either case, using Tools -> Verbatim works better than "All Results"

Yeah they're not actually parsing your operators anymore. They're feeding the whole query to some machine learning model they trained and pulling "what you really meant" out of that.

Re: Saint Helena Island Communications

#109

Post by BenjiWiebe »

Scoundreller wrote: post #96
wffurr wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those create more radio spectrum. I don't see a real replacement for wireline fiber and ethernet ever.

Each "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.

But 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.

Re: Saint Helena Island Communications

#110

Post by BenjiWiebe »

Scoundreller wrote: post #79
bigbillheck wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternate take: "the current licensee will sue us if we allow Starlink".

It’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.

Seems to me that ham radio doesn't fit in that list.
Post reply on HN