[Starlink] Tonga's international cable is back up

[Ulrich Speidel]

Matangitonga said that Starlink wanted to launch this week. But I 
haven't heard confirmation from anyone that they actually have.

I guess a dishy without a link might still make a nice coffee table if 
nothing else & might even keep your coffee at temperature for a bit 
longer, but seriously: I suppose they must think in earnest that they'll 
be able to deliver at least some service some percentage of the time, 
which is more than some of the smaller places have right now. And I 
don't really want to dump on them - at least they tried, as did with 
varying levels of success almost everybody else in the satellite 
business, and that's really all you can ask for.

Tongans are also an incredibly patient and grateful people, whatever 
they have they make do with. I first had plenty of opportunity to 
witness this when we went there on our honeymoon in 2003. One of the 
island villages we stayed on in the Ha'apai group had piped water to the 
beachfront properties installed yonks ago, before they got electricity. 
Then the Australians brought electricity around 2002 & used a trench 
digger to put the cable in along the main drag, unaware that there were 
water pipes in the ground. The locals were too grateful for the 
electricity to complain that they now needed to walk to the cistern to 
get their water, and the problem remained unsolved a year later - we had 
to wash from big barrels and a bit of rainwater off the roof. As we left 
Ha'apai after a hair-raising boat passage in a 4 m boat in 6 m swells, 
we didn't have a flight booked, so went to the Ha'apai office of the 
long since defunct Royal Tongan Airlines to book ourselves on the next 
flight out. The two ladies in the office gave us their most welcoming 
smiles, along with the regret that they couldn't book us a ticket as the 
computer were down. We asked how long such outages typically lasted and 
were told that they didn't know but this one had lasted three months 
already. We then made our way to the airport with the help of a few 
bored Mormon missionaries. We were the only people there until the 
station manager turned up. He reckoned there would be seats and told us 
that he was the local baker as well and had been trying out artisan 
bread recipes, which the locals liked, but was finding it difficult to 
get the right flour. Nice chat! Eventually the plane arrived early 
without any passengers. Pilots and station manager spent ten seconds 
bitching about their employer (rightfully so, a long story I shan't 
repeat - but neither the employees' nor the management's fault, though), 
then the pilots decided that they wanted lunch in Vava'u and off we took 
15 minutes ahead of schedule...

On 22/02/2022 8:45 pm, Daniel AJ Sokolov @mobile wrote:
> So the Starlink terminals have arrived on Tongatapu, but are not 
> operational yet?
>
> Cheers
> Daniel
>
>
> On February 22, 2022 7:31:25 a.m. UTC, Ulrich Speidel 
> <ulrich at cs.auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
> >FWIW... this restores connectivity to ~80% of Tonga's population.
> >
> >The domestic cable may be up to 9 months off, depending on cable lead
> >time, apparently it's got to come from France. In the interim, there's
> >work on more satellite connectivity, I heard from a satellite ISP in NZ
> >today that they were about to ship a few units for Eutelsat links up. I
> >haven't heard any further about operational readiness of Starlink, but
> >have heard from a well-connected source that the dishys delivered to
> >Tonga will remain in Tongan government service in underconnected places
> >if and when service becomes available.
> >
> >I would expect them to hang onto a couple of units for Tongatapu just in
> >case there'll be more turbidity currents messing with the cable, heaven
> >forbid.
> >
> >--
> >****************************************************************
> >Dr. Ulrich Speidel
> >
> >School of Computer Science
> >
> >Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
> >
> >The University of Auckland
> >u.speidel at auckland.ac.nz
> >http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/ 
> <http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich>
> >****************************************************************
> >
> >
> >
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-- 
****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)

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


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