Focussing on telecommunications on the Falkland Islands
Update #4: 6th December. Following comments on Facebook, there seem to be continuing issues with regard to unstable Internet routes to the Falkland Islands since the November 25th planned outage. This will result in unpredictable performance as experienced by users. Update #3: 09:30 Wednesday, 27th November. Sure Falkland islands announced a further planned outage yesterday: By the look of it, […] Read More
Update #8: 10th November 2019 Sadly, it looks like there are still ongoing issues with the Falkland Islands Internet service after receiving several emails and social media messages yesterday about unreliable connections to some web sites. This is a classic symptom of the instability of Internet routing paths caused by connectivity dropouts or DDoS attacks. Whatever the cause(s), it is […] Read More
In October 2019 the Falkland Islands TV channel published a report on the proposed December 2019 FIG-financed doubling of satellite capacity to 400Mbit/s. Kyle Knappett and Caroline Scott of FITV This is that report by FITV’s reporter, Tom Stockting. Full details of this increase can be found in the Falkland Islands Government Executive Council (EXCO) paper 133/19P: Broadband Provision […] Read More
Back now in what now seems the dim and distant past, during Communications Week in March 2019, Jason Lewis hosted a Let’s Talk interview on Falkland Islands Radio Service (FIRS) with individuals talking about telecommunications on the Falkland Islands. These individuals participating were: Roger Spink, MLA responsible for telecommunications portfolio. And the consultants: Richard Womersley, Director, Spectrum Consulting at LStelcom […] Read More
On July 1st 2019, the Falkland Islands’ Communications Regulator issued a “Direction to Sure Falkland Islands, No 2019/01a Quality of Service” which requires Sure Falkland Islands to provide data on broadband Quality of Service (QoS), i.e. the performance of the island’s broadband services. All points discussed apply to both fixed and mobile data network performance Quality of Service (QoS) testing. […] Read More
On July 1st 2019, the Falkland Islands’ Communications Regulator issued a “Direction to Sure Falkland Islands, No 2019/01a Quality of Service” which requires Sure Falkland Islands to provide data on broadband Quality of Service (QoS) in the form of download speeds of the island’s broadband services using ETSI specifications. To do justice to this important subject, I have split the […] Read More
Update: 12th June 2019 In regard to the footnote, the old Roaming Partner list has now been deleted from the Sure Falkland Island’s web server. I have written about Falkland Islands’ mobile services in my posts about the issues concerning overseas’ SMS texts, Two-Factor Authentication and the background to the new 4G service. In this post, I’d like to focus […] Read More
I’ve seen many Facebook posts and heard many comments made over the years expressing the desire for Sure Falkland Islands to offer data ‘Carry-Over’ or ‘Roll-Over’ of unused monthly broadband usage quotas rather than expiring. Nobody likes losing something they’ve paid for. With the high cost of broadband services, this could be an appropriate option to implement on the Falkland […] Read More
Update: 30th May 2019 Batelco signed the original Agreement with Star Solutions to install 4G LTE in the South Atlantic islands in March 2015. I wrote about the history of 4G LTE in Part 1 of this post – A peek under the bonnet of the Falkland Islands’ 4G service: Part 1, 4G history. and I would advise looking at […] Read More
Although consumers generally only care about whether their mobile phones work and that they get a ‘signal’ when they want to make a call, I thought it might be interesting to take a small look under the bonnet of the Falkland Islands’ new 4G service. It’s a little bit of an acronym hell in there but there are only a […] Read More
Synopsis The Falkland Islands Communications Regulator has just issued a report in May 2019 entitled “A Report on Complaints to Sure Falkland Islands”. This report is a step in the right direction but is the data provided appropriate for a monopoly telecommunications environment as experienced in the Falkland Islands and is it what islanders actually want to see? Background Let’s […] Read More
Synopsis It’s critical for Falkland Islanders to be able to fully participate in the world of on-line services which are now driven by concerns of security as never before. None of us can avoid this. Two-Step Authentication based on SMS texts lies at its heart. This maybe one of my shorter posts but it is right up there in importance. […] Read More
Updates are located at the end of the post. Background Back in mid-April 2019, a Falkland Island Internet user posted the following message on Facebook: “For any HSBC customers who hold a UK account: HSBC have now moved to text messaging for authorising any new online transactions on HSBC Visa cards, and it doesn’t currently work with the mobile network […] Read More
Synopsis. This is a very technical post so it will only be of interest if you are involved in managing a website hosted OUTSIDE of the Falkland Islands that uses a .fk based domain. This includes www.falklands.gov.fk. If that is the case, when the Falkland Islands’ Internet is down (as it was on the 30th April 2019) then that site […] Read More
I was pleased to see Household [Internet] User Habits survey on the Falkland Islands as an element of Communications Week in March 2019. However, the stated objective of the survey made me stop and think. “The results of this survey will contribute to calculating the international connectivity demands of the Falkland Islands providing a clearer picture of what a ‘typical […] Read More
In this post I would like to take a look at what is happening in the Internet world outside of the Falkland Islands though I think this may shock some of you. Many Falkland Islanders travel abroad and get a taste of what the Internet is like in countries like the UK and USA and I know that the first […] Read More
I have been talking about the Falkland Islands taking an Exponential Approach rather than taking an Incremental Approach to improving Internet services in posts such as The Enigma of the Falkland Islands National Broadband Strategy or as I would like to call it, National Internet Strategy. Is this such an outrageous approach to adopt? I think not, I’d like to […] Read More
One of the activities of the Falkland Islands Communications Week was to inform the National Broadband Strategy (which I would like renamed the National Internet Strategy) using the Household User Habits Survey. According to the Falkland Islands Regulator’s web site: “This survey is gathering information on how consumers use the internet now, and aspirations for the future. The results of […] Read More
I was pleased when I first heard about the desire to create a National Broadband Strategy for the Falkland Islands. In so many ways, it is great that such an ambition should be tackled but I can’t help thinking that the scope lacks ambition? The stated ambition of Communications Week was to help inform FIG and Sure about what satellite […] Read More
May 14th update Saint Helena and the Falkland Islands Face Simultaneous Outages. (14-05-19)”] On 30 April 2019, internet service in the Falkland Islands and Saint Helena suffered simultaneous outages. We often see large outages in islands or remote areas due to limited sources for internet connectivity and/or extreme weather events. In this case, Sure South Atlantic Ltd is only source […] Read More
During the Falkland Islands Communications Week, it was mentioned that Sure needed to “look at broadband contention going forward” [or something close to that]. So what? you may say. The reason it’s important is that contention has a major impact on the Quality of Experience of using the Internet. It’s certainly nearly equal to the issue of increasing Satellite Capacity. […] Read More
I was pleased to see that FIG, Sure and the regulator have been holding public meetings to talk about and involve islanders in matters of Falkland Islands telecommunications. On Monday, 18th March 2019 in the Chamber of Commerce in Stanley, the session had three presenters from Sure South Atlantic, Falkland Islands Government (FIG) and the Communications Regulator. Here is an […] Read More
In Part 1 of this post I looked at Intelsat’s geo-stationary EPICNG satellite. In part 2, I’d like to talk about Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) High Throughput Satellites (HTS) satellites. There are a lot of acronyms in that title but a general definition of HTS is that the satellite has more than a total of 100 Gbit/s of capacity, which […] Read More
There couldn’t be a better time to look at the up and coming possibilities of increasing satellite capacity (not to forget reducing latency) in the Falkland Islands. The satellite `industry is going through a mega-innovation period with the two big satellite companies developing and launching new satellite constellations. Indded, the industry structure going through major disruptive changes brought about by […] Read More
In Part 1 of this post I talked about the history of monitoring the Quality of Experience of the Falkland Islands’ broadband service – The enigma of monitoring the quality of the Falkland Islands’ broadband service – Part 1: Looking backwards.In Part 2, I will look at the current status of monitoring and look forward to how this could be […] Read More
My apologies for a long post but it’s a complex subject – please stick with it but I have split it into Parts 1 and 2, Right up front I need to declare my strong interest in this subject. I was a Board Advisor and a shareholder of a company called Actual Experience who monitored the Quality of Experience of […] Read More
In the last post The enigma of monthly Internet usage quota, I took a look at an issue that will have a major impact on the deliverability of the subject of this post – the vision of a local high-speed IP public network or ‘cloud’. The conclusion of this post stated: “The creation of this capability is key to ameliorating […] Read More
In my last post on OpenFalklands I looked at the current status of Falkland Islands satellite capacity which dictates the quality of experience of using the Internet in the Falkland islands. Another factor that directly affects experience is the use of a monthly quota or allowance to cap the amount of Internet bytes that can be downloaded. I’d like to […] Read More
In the previous two posts on OpenFalklands I focused SAEx submarine cable connectivity to St Helena as a successful St Helena Government program and the possibility of a submarine cable to the Falkland Islands by extending a Chilean Fibra Optica Austral cable. It is fair to say that the latter is probably not achievable but who knows how things can […] Read More
In my last post, St Helena’s submarine cable, I talked about the SAEx1 submarine cable that is going to connect St Helena to the rest of the world in 2020 using a 200Gbit/s link. In this post I’ll talk about a fibre-optic cable that is lies much closer to the Falkland Islands – Chile’s Fibra Optica Austral initiative. In February […] Read More
13th June 2019 update Of course, not all cable projects succeed. The South Atlantic Express (SAex), would be one of the first direct links between Africa and South America, and connect remote islands like St. Helena along the way. But SAex has struggled with funding and currently sits in limbo. Cinia and MegaFon hope to avoid a similar fate. Source: IEEE Spectrum 15th May […] Read More