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Saint Helena Island Communications

sainthelenaisland.info

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Re: Saint Helena Island Communications

#41

Post by lxgr »

oh_sigh wrote: post #37
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…

Does 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.

Yeah, 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.

Re: Saint Helena Island Communications

#42

Post by Symbiote »

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've no idea of the numbers, but it's possible they'd one one somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic — either St Helena or Ascension — for traffic from aircraft and ships.

Re: Saint Helena Island Communications

#43

Post by lxgr »

legitster wrote: post #20
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…

There 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 hav…

> 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

A "break rules and become unregulateable" approach would not have service boundaries corresponding to political borders.

Re: Saint Helena Island Communications

#44

Post by [deleted] »

wizerdrobe wrote: post #4

> Note that the postcode (‘zip code’) ‘STHL 1ZZ’ applies to the entire island, and also that the ‘South Atlantic Ocean’, while strictly unnecessary, does seem to help prevent letters being routed to California, South Carolina or Australia! Took me several paragraphs to realize this wasn’t invoking my beloved Beaufort County

[deleted]

Re: Saint Helena Island Communications

#45

Post by alejohausner »

nycdatasci wrote: post #7
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…

Relatedly, 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

Awesome! 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)

Re: Saint Helena Island Communications

#46

Post by mikeortman »

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 something that could be done legally). From what I understand, the Saints are an incredibly kind and chill group of people, just living life without much worry. I can't imagine the government giving a shit

Re: Saint Helena Island Communications

#47

Post by AlbertCory »

Jtsummers wrote: post #36
AlbertCory wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did a find on "Napoleon." what did I miss?

Why would the communications page of their site mention him? He's mentioned on other pages if you're curious enough to explore the site, though.

I guess I wasn't.

Re: Saint Helena Island Communications

#48

Post by JetSetWilly »

> A search on Google™ for ‘Saint Helena’ will bring up many sites that are in California, which has a town called ‘Saint Helena’, or South Carolina, which has an area known as ‘Saint Helena Island’. For this reason it is best when using Google™ to append to your search ‘-napa -carolina -california’, which will remove many of these irrelevant results.

Not any more! Since google "enhanced" their search to remove such operators. I just tried searching in this way for eg some restaurants and there was indeed a bunch of irrelevant results even with the exclusions. I wonder what they do now.

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