3,814 times is the charm ...

I publish an email address on Saint Helena Island Info and people use it to contact me about all sorts of things related to St Helena, most of which I am happy to help them with or to pass on to someone who can.

But I also get a lot of spam.  Some is just tedious crap and some is either mildly amusing or laugh-out-load funny (I’ve listed some of the funnier stuff here: http://sainthelenaisland.info/contact.htm#readmore).  Under the “tedious crap” I include all offers of SEO Services to “make my site #1 on Google” and people wanting to make me a video “about the business” (me sitting at my desk typing does not seem to me an entirely riveting plot for a video, even if it is mildly amusing watching me type one-handed with the more-than-occasional missed key and the resultant swearing).

But one thing always puzzles me about the junk I receive. So, in case it’s not obvious, I would like just point out to any prospective spammers out there, that sending me exactly the same email 1,000 times from different email addresses will not persuade me to read it, let alone take any action on it. 

Clear? 

Isn’t competition wonderful?

 

Imagine a race with only one entrant.  Or a football, rugby, cricket or skittles match with only one team.  What would be the point?  The team wouldn’t bother to give of their best because there would be nothing to fight against.  Nobody would watch because the result is obvious from before the start.  It would be completely boring.

It’s exactly the same in business.  If there was only one shop selling some essential thing they could charge almost what they liked for it and the customers would have no choice but to pay it.  And if they treated their customers poorly they’d still be in business because nobody could go anywhere better.  Competition keeps prices down and improves customer service, because if you don’t like what one business is offering you can go to a better one.

SURE just found this out.

Until recently it could charge pretty-much what it liked for Internet usage because customers on St Helena had no alternative.  As a result, St Helena had perhaps the slowest and most expensive Internet access on the planet.  Then Starlink came along and a lot of SURE’s most profitable customers deserted for the much better package offered by Starlink.  If you want to get a business’ attention you hit it in the bottom line.

My guess is that SURE then pressed SHG to take action against Starlink - hence that “cease and desist” press release - but it soon turned out that a) our 35-year-old Telecoms Ordinance just didn’t give SHG the power to ban something as modern as Starlink; b) nobody on the island had the equipment necessary to prove that a Starlink system was being used, which would be necessary for a successful prosecution; and c) there were already so many Starlink users (and despite the press release the number continued to grow) the courts would have been backed up for years trying to prosecute them all.

So, faced for the first time with a serious competitor, SURE has responded.  It has clearly constructed the new tariffs announced last Friday to allow it to seize the market back from Starlink.  And, for all but a very few extremely high volume users, I suspect it will succeed.

To compare Starlink against SURE’s new top package:

1.      Both offer an unlimited connection.  That means no more being cut off mid-month or charged an arm and a leg for excess data usage.  With both you can allow your machine to update itself (especially its anti-virus) when it needs to without worrying how much data it will use.

2.      SURE’s fastest package is only 1/10^th the speed of Starlink, but most of us don’t need all that speed and couldn’t really use it if we had it.  People I know with Starlink say they never exceed 50Mbps, and then only occasionally (when all their friends come round bringing their laptops and phones).  20-25Mbps is more normal and its usually lower.  20Mbps from SURE should meet most people’s needs.

3.      Starlink costs about £750 to buy and set up, and around £200 per month to run, where SURE’s package costs (I understand) nothing to switch to and only £120 (plus 10% government tax) per month.

A few other things: For Starlink you need access to a UK bank account, whereas for SURE you can pay locally.  Starlink needs unobstructed access to the sky (difficult in a valley like Jamestown) but SURE comes down your ordinary telephone line.  Be aware that if you live in an outlying district, even with SURE’s top package you may not get the full 20Mbps because of the long telephone line, whereas in country districts away from obstructions Starlink should operate at its best.  Don’t think you can share a Starlink system with your neighbours to split the cost– that IS illegal under our antiquated Telecoms Ordinance.  Lastly the Latency on SURE should be much better than with Starlink (if you want to game online you’ll know what Latency is, and if you don’t it probably won’t affect you!)

Unless you really need Starlink’s 200 Mbps speed it’s an easy choice: go with SURE.

Would SURE have done this anyway, once it could connect to the Cable (which is much cheaper for it than the old Satellite link)?  I have my doubts.  SURE is in business to make money and few businesses ignore the opportunity to exploit a captive market.  It is my firm belief that SURE would have improved their offering once the Cable came online but would not have gone this far if it had not been forced into it by competition.

Competition is good.

Now we just need to find a way to deal with the island’s other effective monopolies whose prices are too high and whose customer service is below par - the bank and Connect.

Starlink on St Helena

If you’ve had the opportunity to use Starlink I’m sure you were impressed.

If you’ve only ever accessed the Internet from St Helena then you will have heard that the SURE offering is usually called “slow and expensive” but you will have no real concept of just what that means.  With Starlink you can download data at what will look like unbelievable speed (though to the rest of the world it looks like “normal”).  Using SURE’s free overnight period I can download about 2.4 Gb in a single night (6 hours).  With Starlink that same download takes a minute or two.  And because it is uncapped you do not need to worry about data allowances.  Imagine a bar with three different sports events simultaneously playing in high-definition in different parts of the bar.  Possible with Starlink.  You want to watch a movie?  No longer do you need to set up a torrent and wait a couple of nights for it to download – you can just watch it on YouTube.  You can watch one movie while your kids simultaneously watch another or join in an online game with other gamers around the world.  Struggling to download the data for your online education course?  No longer a problem.  Need Teams or Zoom for your business?  It works brilliantly.  Can’t afford Starlink for yourself (it is pretty expensive, but no more per month than SURE’s GoldPlus package)? Then speak to someone else who can afford it – they will have more data than they know what to do with and will surely be happy to download stuff for you.

Of course, if the Maestro project ever gets finished it will be even faster and even cheaper than Starlink, but we all know the history of major “island-changing” projects here: the wharf in Ruperts that turns out to be too small for modern cargo ships.  The airport which can’t carry anything like the number of tourists it was projected to deliver.  The shipping service that can’t keep the island supplied with basic goods.  I could go on.  When we were told Maestro would be live by 31st December this year how many Saints believed it? Even December 2024 is looking uncertain to me.

Starlink is available now.  Yes, it is technically illegal under our current (1989) telecoms Ordinance, but who in 1989 could ever have predicted Starlink?  Back then Diana was still alive, and still married to Prince Charles.  We still had the First RMS and PAS had just opened.  A Mobile Phone was the size (and weight!) of a brick, could only be used to make voice calls and anyway it wasn’t available on St Helena.  The island didn’t have television apart from imported VCR Tapes and Radio St Helena was only on for a few hours a day (and FM radio had been declared “impossible”).  Cable & Wireless had just taken over the telephone system from the government. The island had 3-digit telephone numbers and you couldn’t make an international call yourself (you had to book it through the operator).  It would be seven more years before the Internet became available here, and then you had to make an international call to Ascension to get connected.  How could the Council approving the 1989 Telecoms Ordinance have imagined what the communications world would be like 34 years later, with digital mobile phones, WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube, WiFi, Online Gaming, Video Streaming, Bluetooth and Starlink?  It is insane to regulate modern telecoms by such an out-of-date Ordinance.  

Are you afraid of getting a “cease and desist” letter?  If so, ask yourself this – how can they prove you have used Starlink?  They might be able to demonstrate that you have the equipment, but that in itself is not illegal.  They need to prove you actually used it.  That means either accessing your Starlink account or accessing your bank records to show you are paying the subscription. Neither of these ought to be possible.  Are they going to employ spies to peer through our windows the see Starlink in use?  Or will people “shop” their neighbours to get revenge for some trivial issue, just like how the Stazi operated in East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall (also in 1989)?  The whole idea is ridiculous, and with probably up to 300 Starlinks already operating on the island and more coming with each ship or plane our courts would be jammed with the prosecutions.

Our Ministers could have done what Ascension Island did. They didn’t ban Starlink – they just licenced it.  That reduces the cost too, making it more widely available.  But instead they have made what appears to be an ineffectual threat aimed at holding St Helena back from the future.  Shame on them!