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<p>Fiji's connected to the Southern Cross cable, one of the main
transit routes between Australia and the US, running from Sydney
to Oahu/Hawaii. Plenty of capacity for a bit of island Starlink
there.</p>
<p>It is in fact time that the world started thinking a bit about
better connectivity in the Pacific islands. People like David
Lassner from UHawaii have argued this for a really long time. <br>
</p>
<p>It's not just because of the locals. The Pacific is where your
weather is made and where a lot of your fish comes from. It's
where things happen at a big scale that are interesting to watch,
from stars to volcanic eruptions, climate and so much more.
Geopolitics play out here, often out of view. <br>
</p>
<p>But it's also because of the locals. It's a fascinating cultural
space, too. Did you know that Tongans are part of the Polynesian
family, and Polynesians can communicate with each other in their
languages from NZ in the southwest to Hawaii in the north and
Easter Island (Rapa Nui) in the western Pacific? Hawaii is a ten
hour flight from New Zealand, but they knew how to navigate back
and forth between these specks of land in a vast ocean for many
centuries. Yet many Western countries don't as much as mention
this in their school curricula, giving instead wide space to the
vastly more compact Mediterranean or the not-quite-as-big
Atlantic. <br>
</p>
<p>Nowadays, the Pacific is the scene of one of the world's
trickiest and most cruel digital divides. Anyone chipping away at
this is welcome. <br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 9/02/2022 8:12 am, David Lang wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:26168q80-1s58-sq76-9p74-61r615r99no5@ynat.uz">
On Tue, 8 Feb 2022, Dave Taht wrote:<br>
<br>
> What I don't quite understand is why a full-fledged ground
station is<br>
> needed to get dropped. (in a day after they have laser links)<br>
><br>
> A simple dishy can do 300mbit down and over 20Mbit up. using
a 32k<br>
> codec that's quite a few voice calls, or cleared
transactions.<br>
><br>
> The difference between zero and some connectivity is quite a
lot.<br>
<br>
They don't have enough laser equipped satellites to provide
coverage yet (Elon <br>
commented that providing coverage is quite hard because of the
lack of enough <br>
laser satellites right now). They don't currently do
dishy-to-dishy <br>
communications.<br>
<br>
So, long term you are right, a new ground station there wouldn't
be needed (and <br>
adds additional load to the Fiji underwater links, not desirable
in the long <br>
term), but in the short term, it's what's needed to provide
service in the area.<br>
<br>
David Lang<br>
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</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel
School of Computer Science
Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
Ph: (+64-9)-373-7599 ext. 85282
The University of Auckland
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:ulrich@cs.auckland.ac.nz">ulrich@cs.auckland.ac.nz</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/">http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/</a>
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