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!