Focussing on telecommunications on the Falkland Islands
Open Letter to the Falkland Islands Communications Regulator Alan Cheshire MInstP MIET MIEEE G4EEL VK6CQ VKØLD VP8PJ Telecoms Engineer, Perth Western Australia Chris Gare FIET G3WOS VP8DBL VP8WOS ZD8SIX Board Advisor, Farnborough UK Dr. Gerard Bulger FRCGP G3WIP VP8DPD VK4BGL VKØGB Medical Officer, King Edward Memorial Hospital, Stanley FI Michael Gloistein PM GMØHCQ VP8CMH/MM Radio & Electronics Officer, RRS Sir […] Read More
The case of ‘Gare v Falkland Islands Communications Regulator’ will not proceed to court in November after all. After further consideration, the Regulator has agreed to reinstate my licences and permit me to retain my existing lifetime callsigns, VP8DBL and VP8WOS. I understand that the same principle will be applied to other non-resident lifetime VP8 licence holders on a “case-by-case” […] Read More
Previous updates concerning the Communications Regulator Notice of Appeal maybe seen here and here. UPDATE #5: 7th August 2020. Here is the Falkland Islands TV’s report on the first hearing of the Gare v. Communications Regulator case held in the Magistrates court in Stanley, Falkland Islands. UPDATE #4: 1st August 2020. Yes, you read the title of this post correctly. […] Read More
The full background to this issue can be read in a previous post here Update #3 17th July 2020. A short video on the Appeal was shown on FITV‘s Falklands in Focus. No, it’s not me in the video, unfortunately! Thank you for the coverage FITV! Original Post Following the email received from the Falkland Islands Communications Regulator, on Friday […] Read More
Please read the original post that may be found further down. Then Update #2 and #3. Update #3 – 15th July 2020 This later post describes the current status of the issue. I’ve raised a Notice of Appeal for this decision to be be decided by a judge in the Magistrates Court. Update #2 – 1st July 2020 I received […] Read More
It has been proposed by several Falkland Island hams that a new amateur radio society should be formed in the Falkland Islands that would be open to membership from any resident or non-resident individuals interested in amateur radio. A proposed name could be the ‘Falkland Islands Amateur Radio Society’ (FIARS). Most countries have a national amateur radio society and many […] Read More
The original post can be found further down. Update #9: 7th August 2020 I have today sent a further email to Sure Falkland Islands. To: Chief Executive, Sure South Atlantic Subject: OTT service provider oriented Internet Access product Dear Sir I sent an email on June 30th 2020, which is now over one month ago, concerning the availability of a […] Read More
News about telecommunications that would be interesting to Falkland Island consumers or businesses.
The original post may be found below. Update #2: 3rd July 2020 The PCC’s report in January stated that an apology and compensation of £5,000 be made to KTV Ltd by the Falkland Islands Government (FIG) for the interference they experienced. That has now been agreed by the Executive Council and the recommendations have been accordingly implemented. The Executive Council’s […] Read More
In a recent post, I added a footnote talking about the competence requirements needed to obtain a full Falkland Islands amateur radio licence in the new licencing regime. I thought I would delve into it a little more. Photo credit: RSGB “In the new VP8 amateur radio licence Terms and Conditions, visiting radio amateurs applying for a Full Temporary licence […] Read More
Update, 21st MaRCH 2020 I’ve sent an email to MLAs To: Falkland Islands MLAs cc: Falkland Islands Attorney General Although this is an important issue for the Falkland Islands, but because I’m sure that all your focus and time is being spent on Corona Virus issues, I would like to withdraw this request until things have calmed down a bit. […] Read More
Update; 7th February, CoC meeting Please take a look at the FITV‘s short report on the closed meeting held at The Chamber of Commerce (CoC) on Thursday 6th February 2020. The presentations made by the Falkland Islands Government and Sure South Atlantic were intended to update CoC members about the National Broadband Strategy. The FITV video included an interview […] Read More
Following my previous post – National Broadband Strategy: Subsea cable study, there is a subject that has not had sufficient public debate – Internet blackout resilience and business continuity. With two Internet significant outages in the last year in April and November, Falkland Islanders know all too well about the consequences of an unavailable Internet. I’ll always remember the November […] Read More
I have waited with high expectation for the publication of the Falkland Islands Broadband Strategy as proposed in the March 2019 Telecommunications Week. The only associated release so far was the 25th September EXCO paper on the doubling of satellite capacity in December 2019. One of the reasons I wanted to see it was to get a better understanding of […] Read More
I had a busy trip to the Falkland Islands in November and I want to thank all those individuals that helped make my visit so enjoyable – they know who they are! I was surprised that many people recognised my face and stopped me in the street to say that they enjoyed OpenFalklands as it provided much more information about […] Read More
Final Update #12: 12th December 2019 I am pleased to report that I have heard from IANA that diversity has at long last been added to the FK .ccTLD DNS that was only located on the Falkland Islands breaking IANA’s fundamental policy for a need of diversity on a Top Level Domain such as .FK. Dear Chris, I am writing […] Read More
On Thursday 28th November 2019, I gave a presentation in the Chamber of Commerce in Stanley, Falkland Islands concerning the Islands’ Internet service. This was attended by the editor of Penguin News and was included in last week’s issue. I would like to thank them for allowing me to publish this on OpenFalklands and would wholeheartedly encourage anyone to subscribe […] Read More
On Thursday 28th November 2019, I gave a presentation in the Chamber of Commerce in Stanley, Falkland Islands concerning the Islands’ Internet. This was videoed by Falkland Islands TV and an overview was included in their weekly show. I would like to thank FITV for allowing me to publish this segment on OpenFalklands and would wholeheartedly encourage anyone to subscribe […] Read More
I gave the following well-attended presentation to an audience in the Chamber of Commerce in Stanley, Falkland Islands at 17:00 Thursday, 28th November 2019. The title of the presentation was “Falkland Islands Internet – some thoughts”. You can see the presentation by using the viewer below. You can also access, share or download the presentation on the LinkedIn SlideShare site […] Read More
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
Summary I have been sending Short Messaging Service (SMS) texts to some Falklands Islands residents from the UK but the reply texts have not arrived back to my Vodafone smartphone. Update 11th May 2019 Looking at one or two Sure Falkland Islands monthly bills for April 2019, I see that the SMS texts that were sent to me in the […] 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