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.