[Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Ulrich Speidel]

Indeed, and I know that FINTEL is involved, too. I'll believe it when I 
see it working reliably ;-) At this point, the main action seems to have 
been to apply for a license to operate with Fiji's regulator.

Another question is whether any dishys have arrived in Tonga at this 
point, and how they'll get to where they're needed most (Ha'apai and 
Vava'u, normally connected to Tongatapu via the domestic cable, which is 
also down just north of Tongatapu). I'm mindful here that Tonga is still 
under strict Covid protocol. Deliveries are contactless and any goods 
landed there are left airside / dockside for 3 days to "cool down" 
before anyone local touches them (even that didn't help, though, some 
dock workers still got infected off the Australian Navy ship that got an 
outbreak on board).

Intriguingly, the domestic cable got cut around 75 minutes before the 
international one, so probably scored a direct hit from Hunga, although 
the breakage point is closer to Tongatapu. The international outage 
looks more like a secondary event.

I'm actually quite pleased to see Starlink in Fiji, if only so they 
start thinking about how they'll supply Pacific Islands, which to date 
they simply don't.

On 8/02/2022 12:47 pm, David Lang wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Feb 2022, Ulrich Speidel wrote:
>
>> FAIK FINTEL's Suva facility hasn't been affected (only outlying 
>> islands in Fiji have been hit by tsunami with damage resulting, and 
>> it's been largely minor).
>>
>> However, the FINTEL teleport you see on Google maps isn't Starlink 
>> capable, and it's not a given that it would be available as a site 
>> either, although there seems to be land around it that could be used 
>> I suppose.
>
> this discussion started from reports that starlink engineers are on 
> site in fiji working to install a starlink ground station to support 
> Tonga and run it for 6 months.
>
> David Lang
>
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Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
Ph: (+64-9)-373-7599 ext. 85282

The University of Auckland
ulrich at cs.auckland.ac.nz
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
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