[Starlink] Tonga's international cable is back up

Ulrich Speidel ulrich at cs.auckland.ac.nz
Fri Feb 25 22:02:13 EST 2022 

I like that mental model, too, although the way Internet development has 
historically played out in the Pacific has been quite diverse in comparison.

Some place, e.g., Niue, did initially exactly that - the local geek guru 
got it going and things went from there. Other places were worried that 
their monopoly telco might get competition, and kept a lid on it for 
reasons political or simply because they genuinely felt that their 
island was too small not to pool resources in a single provider. Some 
islands don't have geek gurus. Tonga is a case in point here - the 
smaller islands that didn't have cable so far are, with the exception of 
'Eua, very small in terms of population, a few hundred people at most, 
many only have a few dozen.

On many of these smaller islands, the only businesses are small 
stall-like shops that will sell bread from the local baker and 
necessities such as tooth paste, soap, batteries and that sort of thing, 
plus peanuts and other imported snacks. Whatever the supply ship brings 
when it comes, which could be once every few months in some cases. Most 
people live off the land, go fishing or collect shellfish on the reef, 
and in some cases will produce crafts like pandanus mats or tapa cloth, 
some of which is sent overseas and can generate a bit of income. There 
are a lot of old people in comparison to younger folk, who have often 
left for a life overseas to support those back home. Post offices, 
coffee shops and libraries exist only on the larger islands. The smaller 
islands will always have more churches than you can count, and sadly 
some of these still see the Internet as something to be kept out at all 
cost - something that's by no means unique to Tonga.

On 26/02/2022 2:27 pm, Dave Taht wrote:
> My mental model for starlink was very different than what has deployed
> so far. A local geek guru would get one for the local library/coffee
> shop/post office, set up local wifi and computers cybercafe style, set
> up a few other p2p wireless links, perhaps a lte node, etc, and
> enhance village to village (or island to island) communications via a
> starlink node X miles away, as well as provide/integrate with more
> local services such as local email, videoconferencing and telephony
> without having to traverse the sat at all.
>
> As things built out, fiber or other forms of connectivity would
> emerge, eventually connecting via land or high speed p2p fixed
> wireless links, and starlink reverting to more of a backup. Existing
> ISPs (notably wisps), would build out excessively remote areas this
> way.
>
> This "vision" is highly influenced by efforts such as the villagetelco
> and olpc. To some extent the new "premium" service could go that way,
> but classic business networking services like BGP, working ipv6, real
> ipv4 addresses, etc, are so far, lacking. BYOIP and dual homing for
> existing providers has not been spoken of...
>
> But anyway, I hope the government of tonga uses what they got wisely,
> though my primary use case would be for multiplexing low bitrate apps
> for a lot of people (like voip and financial transactions), over the
> web for a few.
>
> On Fri, Feb 25, 2022 at 8:12 PM Ulrich Speidel 
> <ulrich at cs.auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
> >
> > Someone from FINTEL mentioned this during my seminar on Thursday, 
> apparently they started operations on the 16th and launched officially 
> on the 23rd.
> >
> > That said, if you try to order Starlink for an address in, say, 
> Neiafu on Vava'u, which has 15k people on it and lost its domestic 
> cable connection, you'll be able to pay a US$99 deposit to reserve 
> Starlink for ... 2023.
> >
> > The 50 or so Dishys they have delivered will remain under government 
> control and will probably go all over the place, as there are many 
> smaller island that have no connectivity at all right now. So I doubt 
> that we'll see end user reviews any time soon. I may be able to get 
> some informal feedback in a while.
> >
> > One of the local satellite(-agnostic) ISPs did a review of Starlink 
> service in Auckland, at 37 degrees south:
> >
> > 
> https://getgravity.nz/blog/starlink-review-new-zealand-test-results-2022/ 
> <https://getgravity.nz/blog/starlink-review-new-zealand-test-results-2022>
> >
> > Now that's with a gateway in cycling distance (Clevedon) and two 
> more within less than 200 km, in a region that is probably not too 
> overloaded with users right. They still see frequent outages, and I 
> guess it would be worse in Tonga for the time being.
> >
> > But I guess if it's the alternative to zero connectivity, it's worth 
> having, so kudos to them for pushing the envelope here.
> >
> > On 26/02/2022 7:19 am, Nathan Owens wrote:
> >
> > https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1497258566347943936 
> <https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1497258566347943936>
> >
> > On Fri, Feb 25, 2022 at 9:15 AM Nathan Owens <nathan at nathan.io> wrote:
> >>
> >> Per the Starlink 4-11 Launch webcast just minutes ago, they have 
> launched service in Tonga.
> >>
> >> On Fri, Feb 25, 2022 at 9:12 AM Ulrich Speidel 
> <u.speidel at auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> 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/ 
> <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/ 
> <http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/>
> > ****************************************************************
> >
> >
> >
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>
> -- 
> I tried to build a better future, a few times:
> https://wayforward.archive.org/?site=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.icei.org 
> <https://wayforward.archive.org/?site=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.icei.org>
>
> Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC

-- 
****************************************************************
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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