(and a bit about the possible OneWeb LEO service in St Helena)
I’ve discussed the arrival of the Equiano cable in St Helena several times on OpenFalklands with optimism for improved broadband services for islanders. It goes without saying that this was the whole point of the years-long campaign to bring the undersea cable to the island.
The focus then was the arrival of Google’s transformative Equiano cable, which promised cutting-edge broadband for everyone in St Helena.
The Equiano undersea cable boasts a total design capacity of 144 terabits per second (Tbit/s), linking Western Europe to Southern Africa, with a branch extending to St Helena. While the exact capacity allocated to St Helena hasn’t been publicly disclosed, the island’s government estimates it will provide at least several hundred gigabits per second (Gbps) (Source: Wikipedia).
Many readers will already be familiar with the journey that brought this ambitious project to life, so I won’t repeat it here. However, if you’re not, the three links below will briefly introduce you to the remarkable effort that secured funding to lay a branch from the main Equiano cable to St Helena. It was an inspiring achievement, to say the least.
For clarity, Sure St Helena has been utilising the Equiano submarine cable since October 1, 2023 – somewhat reluctantly, I understand – so the latency that St Helena’s consumers and businesses experience has been reduced considerably since the broadband service was based on Intelsat GEO satellites – which had a Real-Time Delay (RTD) of 570mS+. Recent latency measurements indicate that the RTD from St Helena to the UK is around 180mS.
In November 2022, the St Helena government awarded a contract to Maestro Technologies to design and build a new fibre-optic terrestrial local access network, with an initial completion target of December 31, 2023.
However, so it is more than sad that it appears that not everything has gone – or is going – as hoped or planned. According to page 7 of the 13th June 2024 issue of St Helena’s The Sentinel News, Minister Brookes stated:
“We have not been able to progress the island’s fibre network rollout with Maestro St Helena,” admitted Minister Brooks finally. “I am confirming today that the agreement has been reached to cease the commercial arrangements between the Government and Maestro St Helena.
Despite the collapse of the Maestro Fibre Optic Project, Minister Brooks says that “this Government remains committed to improving accessibility and are considering the next steps needed to realise our vision of being able to fully exploit the benefits of the cable”.
The issue lies not with the Equiano branch cable itself but with the essential requirement to build a terrestrial fibre network – known as Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) – to connect consumers and businesses. As we know, Sure International holds a monopoly telecommunications license on St Helena, which is set to expire on July 1, 2025 (now extended to December 2025). The future of this exclusive licence is currently under consideration by the government.
Given the ongoing telecommunications developments in the Falkland Islands, the review of the recently released summary of the St Helena Fibre Optic Cable Performance Audit is particularly relevant. This audit examined the state of the terrestrial FTTH network activities, which remains crucial for ensuring that St Helena consumers and businesses can fully benefit from the Equiano cable.
Unfortunately, the findings make for troubling reading. I will leave it to readers to draw their conclusions about the root of the problem.
Source: St Helena News
Summary of the St Helena Fibre Optic Cable Network Performance Audit
Key Findings of the Performance Audit
The Performance Audit on St Helena’s fibre-optic cable project highlights significant failures and mismanagement that prevented the island from fully benefiting from its subsea cable connection. While the first phase—connecting St Helena to the main Equiano subsea cable—was successful, the final phase, which aimed to bring fibre-to-home (FTTH), collapsed due to governance issues, contractual failures, and lack of regulatory readiness.
Primary Reasons for Project Failure:
-
Government Overpromising & Poor Contract Management SHG (St Helena Government) overpromised bidders during procurement but failed to meet its own obligations.
No permanent project manager or supervisor was assigned in a timely manner.
Maestro, the contracted builder, never produced a final design.
-
Regulatory and Market ChallengesTelecom policies were drafted but never put into effect.
Incumbent provider Sure refused access to existing ducts, complicating planning.
Beneficiaries were not clearly identified, affecting the network’s rollout.
-
Funding & Financial Management IssuesSHG spent £678,733 on failed implementation costs.
The full £3 million fibre project contract was terminated within a year.
Only 10% of the island’s 100 Gbps capacity is being utilized due to outdated infrastructure.
-
Unmet Digital Strategy GoalsThe 2017 Digital Strategy envisioned affordable, reliable, high-speed broadband, but the project’s failure has left the island with speeds below EU standards (many users getting under 10 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload).
Meanwhile, other British Overseas Territories (BOTs) in the South Atlantic—Tristan da Cunha, Ascension, and the Falklands—are moving towards Starlink, bypassing the need for expensive subsea cables.
What Does This Mean for the St Helena Community?
-
Incomplete Digital Transformation The island has lower broadband costs than before, but speeds have dropped significantly due to the failure to upgrade local infrastructure.
The promised 300 Mbps speeds are far from being achieved.
-
Lagging Behind Other British Territories While Tristan da Cunha and Ascension are adopting Starlink, St Helena remains stuck with underutilized fibre capacity.
Other nations are moving towards gigabit networks, while St Helena still relies on outdated copper infrastructure.
-
Uncertain Future for Internet Development SHG’s next move is unclear, as the government is only now working on telecom regulations, years after the project started.
A regulatory overhaul is needed but is coming too late, raising concerns over whether SHG can keep pace with global digital developments.
Conclusion: A Costly Failure with Uncertain Recovery
A bit about the possible OneWeb LEO service in St Helena
Earlier this year, I explored the potential of using OneWeb’s LEO satellite constellation – currently being deployed in St Helena at Horses Bay as a local loop alternative to a terrestrial fiber network. However, no official announcements have been made as with the Falkland Islands.
 |
 |
|
OneWeb gateway station at Horses Bay, St Helena |
The OneWeb user terminal antennas in Stanley |
You might wonder: why are the antennas in St Helena so large?
Unlike the Falkland Islands, which connect via a OneWeb ground station in Santiago, Chile, St Helena requires its own gateway antenna as no local one is available. Operating in the Ka-band with a generous link budget, this antenna ensures a direct and reliable connection to OneWeb’s network. In contrast, the Falklands only use user terminals in the Ku-band, which rely on a distant gateway for backhaul.
The OneWeb gateway will be directly connected to the Equano undersea cable with a cost estimated to be $4–10 million – paid for by OneWeb? An estimate for a Starlink gateway ranges between $1 million and $3 million per site.
Technical details aside, the OneWeb LEO broadband service in St Helena should offer far greater reliability than the approach taken in the Falklands, where connectivity depends on a much further away remote gateway.
That said, it’s important to recognize that the Falkland Islands and St Helena face entirely different telecommunications challenges at present.
OpenFalklands conclusions
This St Helena fibre project presents a transformative opportunity for St Helena, one that could significantly improve the lives of everyone on the island. I recall the immense effort required to secure funding and to persuade Google to extend a branch connection to the island. The celebrations that followed the arrival and activation of the undersea cable were unforgettable – marking one of the most significant milestones in the island’s history.
Given this, the findings of the recent audit are profoundly disappointing and raise serious concerns for both consumers and businesses. How can a multi-terabyte undersea cable be successfully landed on the island, yet no progress has been made in deploying the essential terrestrial fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network needed to connect to it?
Ultimately, the challenges faced in St Helena are highly relevant to the ongoing telecommunications developments in the Falkland Islands. The experiences of St Helena should not be ignored.
Chris Gare, OpenFalklands January 2025., copyright OpenFalklands
OneWeb, now integrated into Eutelsat following their merger, the combined entity has faced financial challenges. Investors have expressed concerns about Eutelsat’s financial health, particularly in managing its combined €7 billion debt amidst competitive pressures from operators like SpaceX’s Starlink. The cost of insuring against default on Eutelsat’s bonds has surged, reflecting these apprehensions.
To address these challenges, Eutelsat is exploring industrial and commercial partnerships to fund the next generation of satellites for the OneWeb broadband constellation. This strategy aims to enhance their competitive position in the evolving satellite communications market.
https://www.ft.com/content/a5cfd3b1-2013-40b9-adac-ea05688af050
https://www.ft.com/content/f61e2375-3d66-426a-8549-d4cadebb8156
Not for me to comment on the technical aspects where to most laymen and me we can only rely on the likes of you and Ken, who can enlighten us in ways that quite frankly no-one in authority can. And that is precisely my point. It does not matter which Overseas Territory it is, when decisions seem to be made or controlled by mysterious forces off-islands, with regularity failures follow in capital projects, business case designs, and their overall management. In St Helena’s case, although this was not written about a technical project but a human services one – though equally costly in the end – Sasha Wass QC summed it up: “St Helena suffers from bad management and a lack of strategic organization”. However as I posed “Where does the buck rest?” Good that we enjoy freedom of expression to say so but does anyone ever listen? https://anorthumbrianabroad.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-buck-rests-here.html
There are as many differences as similarities between St Helena and the Falklands when it comes to their relationship with Sure South Atlantic, particularly in relation to the nature of its exclusive licences. In St Helena, this is governed by Section 51 of the 1989 (!) Telecommunications Ordinance, which requires SHG to pay compensation to the former licensee if it does not renew its exclusive licence – in other words, if Sure doesn’t get another licence, SHG has to cough up.
Although a new Communications Ordinance was passed in 2022, similar to the one in the Falklands, this was drafted on the (wildly overoptimistic) assumption that the new fibre to the premises network, separate from Sure’s existing network, would be up and running within a year; as this did not come to pass, the new Ordinance has the words ‘Not in force yet’ in red.
Back then, OneWeb had plans to use the Earth Station on St Helena to connect Tristan da Cunha, thereby vastly improving internet connectivity, but that has been overtaken by events, with the island now connected to Starlink.
While I hold no brief for Elon Musk, though he probably has less blood on his hands than the Bahraini owners of Sure, the reality is that Starlink is not only jam today, not jam tomorrow, but it is also jam directly on sale to the likes of you and me as consumers, as a business to consumer service.
Consequently, people there, in Ascension and in the Falklands can try Starlink out for themselves, something they cannot do with OneWeb; if they could, just as they could VSAT services, then at least they wouldn’t be accused of being Musk fanboys.
I wouldn’t call the experience with the Equiano cable a disaster, however embarrassing and frustrating the Maestro FTTP fiasco has been, but like the airport before it, it wasn’t the great game changer it was portrayed as being.
The Audit St Helena document can be read in full here – https://audit.gov.sh/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Performance-Audit-Fibre-Optic-Cable-Network-Project-Jan-2025.pdf
Thanks for the audit document link Ken – I couldn’t track it down. Don’t shoot the messenger Ken, the word is being used by islanders. I completely agree that the Equiano cable itself is not a “disaster” – this word is used in relation to the terrestrial fibre network that was supposed to connect customers to the Equiano cable.
If anyone would like to see how Starlink is working out in Tristan da Cunha then look at this – https://www.tristandc.com/government/news-2024-09-22-starlink.php
Apologies for attributing that term to you, Chris – the most disparaging remarks about the cable I’ve come across have come from Saints in the diaspora, though there was some grumbling about it on the island when I visited.
The full report makes a most interesting read – an extract example:
“CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The arrival of the Equiano subsea cable saw a significant improvement in the
telecommunications services on St Helena. Before connecting to Equiano, St Helena
users were sharing limited bandwidth from satellite technologies which was far below
the current 10 Gbps. Now, Sure’s new broadband packages mean that business and
residential customers are paying less for greater access at faster speeds.
Without downplaying the quick wins from the Equiano going live, more work needs to
be done to upgrade the island’s telecommunications network system to unlock the
full value of SHG’s investment in the subsea cable. Currently, SHG is paying for a
traffic capacity of 100 Gbps in each direction but utilising only 10% of this total
because of the limitations of the incumbent’s existing copper infrastructure.
Moreover, the majority of residential users are experiencing download speeds below
10 Mbps and upload speeds below 1 Mbps, which fall short of EU milestones
specifying at least 17 Mbps for residential properties.