> A search on Google™ for ‘Saint Helena’ will bring up many sites that are in California, which has a town called ‘Saint Helena’, or South Carolina, which has an area known as ‘Saint Helena Island’. For this reason it is best when using Google™ to append to your search ‘-napa -carolina -california’, which will remove many of these irrelevant results.
Not any more! Since google "enhanced" their search to remove such operators. I just tried searching in this way for eg some restaurants and there was indeed a bunch of irrelevant results even with the exclusions. I wonder what they do now.
> The current PABX-based system went live over the weekend of 27-29th July 1990
A PBX serving a whole country, even a small one, is wild. From what I could find [1] the system used was a UXD5 exchange [2] which is technically a PSTN exchange intended for rural areas and based off the Monarch 120 PBX [3].
The architecture of the UXD5 is common to a lot of telephone exchanges of the time (possibly modern ones as well?) with actor based message passing, actors running on different levels (more real time vs less real time) and a combination of assembly and a high level language (in this case, Coral [4]). Fascinating stuff.
> In July 2019 the Government of St Helena announced that it has issued a letter of intent to connect the island to Equiano. The 1,140Km branch to Saint Helena was completed in 2021 so this cable will provide the first fibre optic connectivity from St Helena to the outside world through both Europe and South Africa.
> Compared to the current satellite link the cable will bring almost incredible amounts of capacity. The Government of St Helena estimates that it will deliver several hundred gigabits per second - far more than the island’s population of around 4,400 people{16} could possibly use. The plan is therefore to turn the island into a communications hub
> [...]
> A route survey was conducted in August 2019 and at the end of the year the Government of St Helena announced that it had signed an agreement with Google™ to land the cable at St Helena, aiming to commence service in 2022.
> On 6th February 2020 Sure announced that it had no plans to upgrade domestic and small-business Internet connections to Fibre-Optic when the Equiano Cable arrives in 2022, meaning ordinary users would not see the full benefits of the new system.
The fact there is an internet monopoly barring residents to use other internet providers is sad, especially given the impact on the GDP of the island if proper high speed internet and technological resources are available.
I have a feeling the government is doing the cease and desist as a hand wavy thing to make the internet company happy, but will put little if any effort in actually enforcing it (if there is even something that could be done legally). From what I understand, the Saints are an incredibly kind and chill group of people, just living life without much worry. I can't imagine the government giving a shit
>>The fact there is an internet monopoly barring residents to use other internet providers is sad
I guess the deal was that if this company brings internet connectivity then they get exclusivity on the island for X number of years. I wish the article would get into more details about this deal.
Edit: on second read, the article does actually. It mentions the exclusivity deal was meant to expire in 2022, but because of lack of suitable replacement or alternative solutions it was extended to 2023 and it was just extended again to 2024.
> It has come to the attention of the St Helena Government that members of the public may have acquired, imported and be currently using terminals, such as Starlink, for the purposes of internet connectivity. Using such terminals is in contravention of the exclusivity of current telecommunications licencing arrangements made under section 3(4) of the Telecommunications Ordinance 1989. From 1 November 2023 anyone using such a terminal will be liable to be subject to a ‘ceaseand desist’ order issued on behalf of the Government. A cease and desist order is an instruction to stop using terminals, and continue to refrain from using terminals, whilst the exclusivity of the current telecommunications licencing arrangements remain in force. Any breach of such a cease and desist order may result in the confiscation of the equipment.
Starlink seems to be illegal to protect the government’s investment in a monopoly on the main satellite.
It's extra delicious when read in context of these quotes:
> In the summer of 2016, the United Nations declared access to internet is a human right. While we are just beginning to realize the internet’s potential for our island and with the prospects of a high speed cable arriving on our shores, perhaps now is the time to re-evaluate the importance of information technology for EVERYONE. Can we truly reach our fullest potential if access to the World Wide Web is available only to those who can afford it?
> Inhabitants of the tiny tropical island of St Helena pay through the nose for an internet service that mainlanders would have considered painfully slow even during the pre-Netflix era.
> St Helena’s isolation and reliance on satellite technology, means that internet services are limited and expensive compared to many countries, and are a major barrier to development. The top residential package offered in St Helena provides 13.3 megabytes of data at a speed of 1.5 megabits per second, and costs £180.50 per month.
A number of years ago NYC decriminalized ownership of beehives, and a journalist interviewed a bunch of people who had them anyway. They all had schemes to hide their hives. One guy made it look like an AC condenser, and went so far as buying himself work clothes to make him look like a repairman.
If you make it out of the right materials, it shouldn’t be too hard to conceal a starlink antenna without destroying the gain.
Does a monopoly make sense here? Pre starlink, there was probably a huge cost to bring internet to the island, and those doing so wanted to have some form of protection in order to confidently invest the capital to do so.
The most interesting part (to me) is buried in the middle:
"Compared to the current satellite link the [undersea, Google owned fiber-optic] cable will bring almost incredible amounts of capacity. The Government of St Helena estimates that it will deliver several hundred gigabits per second - far more than the island’s population of around 4,400 people could possibly use. The plan is therefore to turn the island into a communications hub, with satellites in space linking via groundstations on the island to the world via the cable. The Government of St Helena believes St Helena’s position in the South Atlantic and its political and physical stability make it an ideal and almost unique location for this use."
There is something to be learned from the simplicity and quaintness of this site - the information density is much higher than 90% of modern web sites. In a single page, by simply scrolling I learned so much about the communication infrastructure of a British island outpost.
There's nothing to be learned from the site's terrible organization, navigation, layout, or extreme density which makes it difficult to read. Density is not necessarily good; have you noticed that most hardcover and paperback books have pretty limited line length? Fairly generous inter-line spacing? Indented paragraphs?
There's so much "cruft" scattered around, too - tiny text "explaining" things. You shouldn't have to explain how to use your site's UI to visitors. And that UI incorporates incredibly tiny buttons that are impossible to use on mobile.
The author stopped learning about web design in the late 90's and seemingly doesn't give a damn about making his site actually useful and easy to navigate. It also doesn't come remotely close to passing HTML validation.
There's a meme-like website that demos this very concept. Then there's a v2.0 or some ++ type versioning where they use very minimal CSS to actually improve the readability. I'm a fan of the use of the minimal CSS to add margins and widths as it improves readability for me.
Searching for it with only the vagueness of what I can think of right now returns nothing useful, and that's with not using Google. Maybe my vague description will be enough with someone with better recall than I have.
> Note that the postcode (‘zip code’) ‘STHL 1ZZ’ applies to the entire island, and also that the ‘South Atlantic Ocean’, while strictly unnecessary, does seem to help prevent letters being routed to California, South Carolina or Australia!
Took me several paragraphs to realize this wasn’t invoking my beloved Beaufort County
> In July 2019 the Government of St Helena announced that it has issued a letter of intent to connect the island to Equiano. The 1,140Km branch to Saint Helena was completed in 2021 so this cable will provide the first fibre optic connectivity from St Helena to the outside world through both Europe and South Africa.
Compared to the current satellite link the cable will bring almost incredible amounts of capacity. The Government of St Helena estimates that it will deliver several hundred gigabits per second - far more than the island’s population of around 4,400 people{16} could possibly use. The plan is therefore to turn the island into a communications hub, with satellites in space linking via groundstations on the island to the world via the cable. The Government of St Helena believes St Helena’s position in the South Atlantic and its political and physical stability make it an ideal and almost unique location for this use.
Does it have reliable supplies of plentiful and cheap electricity and water?
Because without that, datacenters won't be showing up...
And even if it did, big US companies don't really like to have data centers in places that are too remote, if only because staff have to visit from time to time and don't want to have to take an 8 hour seaplane ride to get there...
On 6th February 2020 Sure announced that it had no plans to upgrade domestic and small-business Internet connections to Fibre-Optic when the Equiano Cable arrives in 2022, meaning ordinary users would not see the full benefits of the new system.
Having their ISP refusing to connect customers to the long awaited fiber is the most Telco thing ever.
For those of you interested in reading about work being done to start a new city (1) or new semi-autonomous country (2) where people can plan something new, St Helena Island sounds like a good candidate- remote but can still in the middle of several trade routes.
Anyone's heard of what? St Helena? I think it is pretty well known in its own right so I don't see reason for a site about telecoms on the island to reference someone who was on the island hundreds of years ago ?
Saint Helena has import tariffs like other colonies do. They used to have preferential rates for commonwealth countries but I'm not sure if that still exists. I guess my response would be they have import duties for the same reasons other colonies do. Why wouldn't they tax imports?
[+] [-] JetSetWilly|2 years ago|reply
Not any more! Since google "enhanced" their search to remove such operators. I just tried searching in this way for eg some restaurants and there was indeed a bunch of irrelevant results even with the exclusions. I wonder what they do now.
[+] [-] warkdarrior|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EA-3167|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mavhc|2 years ago|reply
[Saint Helena Island] brings up only results about the island
[+] [-] beowulfey|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scottlawson|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scoot|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] MichaelAza|2 years ago|reply
> The current PABX-based system went live over the weekend of 27-29th July 1990
A PBX serving a whole country, even a small one, is wild. From what I could find [1] the system used was a UXD5 exchange [2] which is technically a PSTN exchange intended for rural areas and based off the Monarch 120 PBX [3].
The architecture of the UXD5 is common to a lot of telephone exchanges of the time (possibly modern ones as well?) with actor based message passing, actors running on different levels (more real time vs less real time) and a combination of assembly and a high level language (in this case, Coral [4]). Fascinating stuff.
[1] https://techmonitor.ai/technology/cable_wireless_has_contrac...
[2] https://sites.google.com/site/monarchcallconnectsystem/uxd5-...
[3] https://sites.google.com/site/monarchcallconnectsystem/monar...
[4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CORAL
[+] [-] ithkuil|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thefz|2 years ago|reply
> Compared to the current satellite link the cable will bring almost incredible amounts of capacity. The Government of St Helena estimates that it will deliver several hundred gigabits per second - far more than the island’s population of around 4,400 people{16} could possibly use. The plan is therefore to turn the island into a communications hub
> [...]
> A route survey was conducted in August 2019 and at the end of the year the Government of St Helena announced that it had signed an agreement with Google™ to land the cable at St Helena, aiming to commence service in 2022.
> On 6th February 2020 Sure announced that it had no plans to upgrade domestic and small-business Internet connections to Fibre-Optic when the Equiano Cable arrives in 2022, meaning ordinary users would not see the full benefits of the new system.
Screw this ISP, man.
[+] [-] skrause|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] realo|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tijdreiziger|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikeortman|2 years ago|reply
I have a feeling the government is doing the cease and desist as a hand wavy thing to make the internet company happy, but will put little if any effort in actually enforcing it (if there is even something that could be done legally). From what I understand, the Saints are an incredibly kind and chill group of people, just living life without much worry. I can't imagine the government giving a shit
[+] [-] gambiting|2 years ago|reply
I guess the deal was that if this company brings internet connectivity then they get exclusivity on the island for X number of years. I wish the article would get into more details about this deal.
Edit: on second read, the article does actually. It mentions the exclusivity deal was meant to expire in 2022, but because of lack of suitable replacement or alternative solutions it was extended to 2023 and it was just extended again to 2024.
[+] [-] kickofline|2 years ago|reply
Starlink seems to be illegal to protect the government’s investment in a monopoly on the main satellite.
[+] [-] yencabulator|2 years ago|reply
> In the summer of 2016, the United Nations declared access to internet is a human right. While we are just beginning to realize the internet’s potential for our island and with the prospects of a high speed cable arriving on our shores, perhaps now is the time to re-evaluate the importance of information technology for EVERYONE. Can we truly reach our fullest potential if access to the World Wide Web is available only to those who can afford it?
> Inhabitants of the tiny tropical island of St Helena pay through the nose for an internet service that mainlanders would have considered painfully slow even during the pre-Netflix era.
> St Helena’s isolation and reliance on satellite technology, means that internet services are limited and expensive compared to many countries, and are a major barrier to development. The top residential package offered in St Helena provides 13.3 megabytes of data at a speed of 1.5 megabits per second, and costs £180.50 per month.
[+] [-] hinkley|2 years ago|reply
If you make it out of the right materials, it shouldn’t be too hard to conceal a starlink antenna without destroying the gain.
[+] [-] nycdatasci|2 years ago|reply
Edit: Updating link to jump to the relevant section of the talk. https://youtu.be/F9cO3-MLHOM?t=397
[+] [-] oh_sigh|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimkleiber|2 years ago|reply
So much of our governance, if not all, is based on geographic sovereignty, and satellites can supersede that.
I hope we finally get more global governance to deal with more and more global issues.
[+] [-] bigbillheck|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cbsks|2 years ago|reply
18£: 30GB. 5Mbps down, 1Mbps up
36£: 60GB. 5Mbps down, 1Mbps up
67£: unlimited. 10Mbps down, 1Mbps up
120£: unlimited. 20Mbps down, 1Mbps up
https://www.sure.co.sh/assets/Banner-Links/Residential-Broad...
[+] [-] jedberg|2 years ago|reply
"Compared to the current satellite link the [undersea, Google owned fiber-optic] cable will bring almost incredible amounts of capacity. The Government of St Helena estimates that it will deliver several hundred gigabits per second - far more than the island’s population of around 4,400 people could possibly use. The plan is therefore to turn the island into a communications hub, with satellites in space linking via groundstations on the island to the world via the cable. The Government of St Helena believes St Helena’s position in the South Atlantic and its political and physical stability make it an ideal and almost unique location for this use."
[+] [-] syndicatedjelly|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KennyBlanken|2 years ago|reply
There's so much "cruft" scattered around, too - tiny text "explaining" things. You shouldn't have to explain how to use your site's UI to visitors. And that UI incorporates incredibly tiny buttons that are impossible to use on mobile.
And then there's this absolute dumpster-fire: https://sainthelenaisland.info/communications.htm#q_navigati...
The author stopped learning about web design in the late 90's and seemingly doesn't give a damn about making his site actually useful and easy to navigate. It also doesn't come remotely close to passing HTML validation.
[+] [-] dylan604|2 years ago|reply
Searching for it with only the vagueness of what I can think of right now returns nothing useful, and that's with not using Google. Maybe my vague description will be enough with someone with better recall than I have.
[+] [-] wizerdrobe|2 years ago|reply
Took me several paragraphs to realize this wasn’t invoking my beloved Beaufort County
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] miohtama|2 years ago|reply
Gibraltar is GX11 1AA (the whole country).
[+] [-] scroot|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quickthrower2|2 years ago|reply
> In July 2019 the Government of St Helena announced that it has issued a letter of intent to connect the island to Equiano. The 1,140Km branch to Saint Helena was completed in 2021 so this cable will provide the first fibre optic connectivity from St Helena to the outside world through both Europe and South Africa.
Compared to the current satellite link the cable will bring almost incredible amounts of capacity. The Government of St Helena estimates that it will deliver several hundred gigabits per second - far more than the island’s population of around 4,400 people{16} could possibly use. The plan is therefore to turn the island into a communications hub, with satellites in space linking via groundstations on the island to the world via the cable. The Government of St Helena believes St Helena’s position in the South Atlantic and its political and physical stability make it an ideal and almost unique location for this use.
[+] [-] londons_explore|2 years ago|reply
Because without that, datacenters won't be showing up...
And even if it did, big US companies don't really like to have data centers in places that are too remote, if only because staff have to visit from time to time and don't want to have to take an 8 hour seaplane ride to get there...
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] craig_s_bell|2 years ago|reply
My favorite posts are the trip reports... They have hiked to every corner of the island. Great photos, and lots of history.
[+] [-] quickthrower2|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whalesalad|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aachen|2 years ago|reply
"The World's Most Useful Airport [Documentary]" —Wendover Productions, 2019-12-31
[+] [-] WarOnPrivacy|2 years ago|reply
Having their ISP refusing to connect customers to the long awaited fiber is the most Telco thing ever.
[+] [-] inemesitaffia|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wantlotsofcurry|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maximilianburke|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antiviral|2 years ago|reply
(1) https://apnews.com/article/silicon-valley-tech-investors-new...
(2) https://www.wired.com/story/itana-binance-charter-cities-ins...
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] AlbertCory|2 years ago|reply
It's funny that they don't much mention the main reason anyone's heard of it.
[+] [-] mattlondon|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avgcorrection|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rwmj|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jseutter|2 years ago|reply
edit: found an updated tariff document https://www.sainthelena.gov.sh/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/ST... . I don't see anything special for commonwealth countries so it's probably a thing of the past.