Spare a Thought for the Falkland Islands and Terrible Broadband

We often report in gripes with rural broadband connectivity from across the United Kingdom but spare a thought for the 3,400 people living on the largely self-governing and self-sufficient Falkland Islands, where all of the fixed line services and mobile networks are still supplied by a limited Satellite data link.

The islands, which are an Overseas Territory of the UK that reside nearly 500 kilometres off the South American coast (Argentina), have long suffered from poor digital connectivity and that’s partly due to the political fallout from the 1982 Falklands War (running a link back through Argentina, where the islands are known as Islas Malvinas, probably isn’t going to be considered either viable or wise any time soon).

On top of that the community is also incredibly remote, which even in an ideal political environment would still make running a subsea fibre optic line incredibly expensive (the islands GDP is £100m per annum and it’d probably cost more than that). Likewise you’d struggle to get a viable fixed wireless link from the South American coast.

Instead the islands are forced to get their data capacity from a Satellite link, which we believe currently leases about 200-300Mbps of total capacity. Little wonder that the average broadband download speed recorded by users on the Falkland Islands is around 1.5Mbps, with uploads coming in at just below 1Mbps (note: the speedtest sample size for this is tiny but the results seem about right given the above figures).

Fixed line ADSL broadband services on the islands tend to be provided by Sure (Sure South Atlantic), while Mobile comes from Vodafone. The latter has recently deployed a 4G network, which seems able to deliver the ever so slightly better average download speed of around 2Mbps (hardly worth using 4G for that but then the kit had to be upgraded anyway).

Sure tends to offer a choice of capped broadband packages, which range from 1.28Mbps (0.12Mbps upload) with a 3GB usage allowance for £15 per month to 5Mbps (0.76Mbps) with 105GB for £425.00 per month! Yes we can confidently classify this level of connectivity as being.. crap. However there are hints of progress from the local Government.

Governor Nigel Phillips, Speaking to the Falkland Islands Legislative Assembly, said yesterday:

“This year has also seen advancements in telecommunications with the introduction of increased broadband allowances in July 2018 as well as the rollout of a new 4G network and the extension of the existing 2G network to remote areas.

The Government continues to work with the monopoly provider to help measure performance and target future investments.

Furthermore, the Regulator has been working hard to put in place plans to improve telecommunications services which remain a challenge for the islands. This has included the introduction of a new Spectrum Management Framework and the development of a new National Broadband Strategy.”

Unfortunately that National Broadband Strategy is somewhat hobbled by the fact that all it can really do is put forward a case for increasing Satellite capacity. On the upside it’s just possible that one of the new Low Earth Orbit (LEO) based satellite constellations, such as from SpaceX (here) or OneWeb (here), might end up providing a good solution but we won’t know for sure until those reach commercial operation. In any case the local government has not yet considered this.