Falkland Islands Government Grants Licence for Starlink Satellite Broadband

The Falkland Islands Government (FIG) has, after plenty of confusion and debate earlier in the year (here and here), finally granted a VSAT Broadband Connectivity Licence to SpaceX’s Starlink service. The move allows homes and businesses on the remote islands, which are a British Overseas Territory, to take an ultrafast internet service via Starlink’s satellite network.

Just to recap. The islands, which reside around 500km off the South American coast and are home to 3,700 people, have long suffered from poor internet connectivity and that’s partly due to the political fallout from the 1982 Falklands War. Until now, locals have had little option but to connect via an extremely slow and expensive satellite data link from the dominant provider, Sure (Sure Falklands Islands).

Locals have long been campaigning for the FIG to work with SpaceX in order to approve the use of its Starlink based broadband service, which reflects a mega constellation of satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). The change, if approved, would enable access to a significantly faster and more flexible service for less money. But first they’d have to find a solution for Sure’s exclusive licence and the hefty annual VSAT fees (£5,400) that could be levied against those seeking to officially take Starlink’s service (some were already using it in an unofficial and unsupported capacity, which was previously illegal).

The first real positive development came in June 2025, after the FIG bowed to pressure from residents and revised the VSAT policy and fee level (£180 per year – bringing it within the realm of consumer affordability). But the Communications Regulator still needed to go through the usual motions and negotiate a solution to Sure South Atlantic’s exclusive telecommunications licence. Only after that could Starlink officially launch its service and determine pricing for the Falklands.

According to the Open Falklands blog, the FIG and Sure reached an agreement last week to allow Sure to continue to discharge its universal service obligations under its exclusive telecommunications licence, alongside the more permissive VSAT licensing scheme approved by Executive Council in June this year. The deal also paves the way for the re-opening of personal VSAT licence applications with the new policy and fee level in place.

The commercial agreement, which also avoids the FIG having to fight Sure’s judicial review proceedings, involves the government paying money to Sure to compensate for the loss of broadband revenues it can demonstrate it was making before the introduction of widespread Starlink usage. The threat of new competition has thus also had another welcome impact:

Extract from the Open Falklands blog

Although the detailed workings of the scheme are commercially confidential, Executive Council determined it was right to inform the public of the potential sums involved, as this is taxpayer money. Over the remainder of the exclusive licence period, Sure will be eligible to claim up to £6.167m. However, the actual amount claimed will be dependent on Sure evidencing losses against a pre-Starlink baseline. As such, the more people retain or take up Sure broadband packages, the less will be claimed.

Alongside this new agreement Sure will launch two unlimited residential broadband packages priced at £50 and £115 a month, exclusive of line rental, for unlimited use. The different prices reflect the two different speeds of the packages [up to 5Mbps and 15Mbps respectively], which will be available from 1st December 2025 and will replace all existing broadband packages for new customers. Existing customers on packages sized ‘medium’ and above will be able to retain their existing arrangements if they wish.

Existing extra small and small broadband packages will be phased out by 31st January 2026, with customers on these packages being given a two-month transitional period from the 1 December 2025 to move to a Sure unlimited package or to VSAT services with a licence. There will be some other changes on the same timetable, such as adjustments to monthly line rental and an amendment to broadband hotspot use for unlimited package holders, which will be communicated by Sure.

The new Sure packages can already be seen on their website (here), which also summarises a number of other changes to pricing. The packages are much more competitive and attractive than what came before (the merits of a competitive market at work), although the speeds of 5Mbps and 15Mbps remain pretty poor by modern standards and latency times on Sure’s older satellite network will be much slower than Starlink’s constellation in Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

The big question now is what sort of packages and prices will Starlink come out with now that they’ve finally been granted a VSAT licence and can officially serve residents at an affordable level. The provider is expected to reveal that information very soon (possibly within the next few days). But the service will likely be more expensive and probably a bit slower than their packages in the UK.

Starlink currently has almost 8,800 satellites in orbit (c.5,200 are v2 / V2 Mini) – mostly at altitudes of c.500-600km – and rising. Residential customers in the UK usually pay from £75 a month, plus £299 for hardware (currently free for most areas) on the ‘Standard’ unlimited data plan (kit price may vary due to different offers), which promises UK latency times of 26-33ms, downloads of 116-277Mbps and uploads of 17-32Mbps. Cheaper and more restrictive options also exist for roaming users.