This post is a follow-up to the presentation delivered by Sure Falkland Islands on March 19th, 2025, in Stanley. You can listen to the presentation and view the accompanying slides here.
In my last OpenFalklands post, I focused on the technical aspects discussed during the meeting – specifically, the comparison between Starlink and OneWeb’s technical performance in the Falkland Islands.
However, after reviewing the presentation transcript, another recurring theme stood out: Sure’s claims about a complete lack of profitability if ExCo were to permit Starlink’s deployment in the Falklands. It was also stated unequivocally that the islands could not sustain two operators. I felt these claims warranted further examination.
Here are examples of the statements made in the presentation:
“…one of the problems is that if it’s a small marketplace, the Falkland Islands, it’s a relatively, you know, it’s 4,000 people who live here. And it isn’t big enough to sustain more than one telecoms operator.”
Q: “So are you saying you wouldn’t make enough profit if of the population shifted to Starlink? A: I’m saying that Sure wouldn’t make any profit at all.”
Q: “Could you publish that information, though, the profits, so we can make a decision from that? A: “No, I can’t share that information with you right here and now. But the point is that if the Falkland Islands cannot sustain two, three, four operators, it’s just simply not big enough.”
“…we’ve got our costs in terms of the people that we employ here, we’ve got our costs in terms of the capacity that we’re spending millions of pounds on, and we can’t overnight cut those costs to zero. That’s not how it works. And if we want to be able to provide those services in an ongoing way, supported with a local team, it requires very significant investment to be able to do that. And there isn’t room in the market for two operators.”
“…if Starlink was to come across, come into all of our islands, yes, we would not make any profit.”
“…the costs and the capex and all the rest of it, all the investment that we’re making at the risk… And still making a significant profit. So, yeah. But you asked me the question of would we end up in a loss? Yes, we would. Okay.”
“They don’t use it [Ed: landline] more and more and more because people use WhatsApp to make calls. So then we end up providing a service that is just purely for kind of emergency use or for driving around and moving around and pure mobile use. And that kind of service, I don’t know about you, but how much you’re willing to pay a month for an emergency service, it’s not very much.”
What Sure is trying to say
So, what lies behind these bold – and at times extreme – statements made by Sure? While they were pretty explicit during the presentation, it’s worth breaking it down.
Starlink offers high-speed, low-latency internet access without needing ADSL networks, towers, or traditional infrastructure. In a market like the Falkland Islands, with its small population and limited revenue potential, Starlink directly threatens Sure’s core internet service, which still relies heavily on older GEO satellite technology and even its newly announced OneWeb service.
Sure also claims to have high operational costs (OPEX) but serves only a small customer base. If Starlink captures even part of that base, Sure’s economies of scale are disrupted, leading to significant revenue erosion and making it harder to sustain operations.
Sure currently enjoys a fully protected monopoly, allowing it to maintain healthy profit margins without external pressure to innovate. Starlink undermines that protection, exposing them to competition for which they appear unprepared. Sure’s response to this has been to announce the introduction of unlimited GEO-based services and a lower-latency OneWeb LEO option to stave off the threat.
Sure and FIG have also invested heavily in physical infrastructure and Intelsat satellite capacity. Starlink’s entry puts those investments at risk of underperforming or becoming obsolete, potentially leaving Sure with shrinking profits and stranded assets.
What really lies behind these comments?
Drawing on my extensive experience in the telecommunications market, I believe these are the key challenges facing Sure Falkland Islands, Ascension Island, and St Helena – challenges they would do well to acknowledge openly.
Sure heavily depends on maintaining its monopoly across the islands from a cost, strategy, management, service offering, and staffing standpoint. Without competition, there’s little incentive to innovate or improve. However, the arrival of Starlink threatens that comfortable status quo, forcing Sure to compete on price, speed, and reliability, which are areas in which Starlink excels.
Sure’s relationship with the communications regulator and FIG will become complicated now that public sentiment has shifted to favour the cheaper, higher-performing Starlink service. Considering Sure’s current stance concerning Starlink, balancing the Falkland Islands’ infrastructure interests with consumer demand will challenge FIG’s regulatory position.
Several years ago, Sure International entered into a formal purchasing agreement with Intelsat/OneWeb to deploy OneWeb’s LEO services across the South Atlantic territories. This decision predated Starlink’s rapid rise and dominance. Since then, millions of pounds have probably been sunk into attempting to deliver OneWeb services in the Falklands.
It’s a classic catch-22: backing out of these OneWeb commitments would carry significant financial and reputational consequences, thus leaving Sure with no choice but to push forward with what it has.
Yet even now, Sure stated during their recent presentation: “We’ve tested it. It still needs some more testing to verify that it is a proper service you can all rely on.”
At the core of Sure’s struggle is a traditional, rigid communications business model focused narrowly on providing Internet and mobile services without meaningful diversification into areas like cloud services or IT support. Starlink’s entrance starkly highlights this vulnerability, a concern repeatedly raised in public discussions over the last 15 years and surfaced again during the recent presentation Q&A.
Statements made by Sure International’s management appear to form part of a broader lobbying effort aimed at persuading ExCo and FIG to block Starlink’s entry by citing potential “economic harm” or “job losses”. Without being too cynical, it’s a familiar tactic used to defend market position during regulatory negotiations.
Sure faces the classic “incumbent’s dilemma” – from residents’ perspective, the prospect of cheaper, faster, and more reliable internet through Starlink is a clear benefit. Yet Sure seems unwilling – or unable – to acknowledge this reality, caught between the limitations of its current service offerings and the challenges posed by its newly announced plans.
Sure say they have considered pivoting by partnering with Starlink. However, they stated:
“We’ve been having discussions with Starlink, which are currently paused. I believe they are waiting to see what the outcome is here in the Falkland Islands. At present, discussions with Sure are not continuing. But we remain open to engaging with Starlink.”
The reality is that Starlink’s business model has always been predominantly direct-to-consumer, with only rare exceptions in major markets like India. The Falkland Islands do not represent a similarly lucrative opportunity commercially.
What’s striking is that despite Sure’s considerable effort in criticising Starlink’s performance – both in their presentation and their submission to the Select Committee – they still acknowledge a willingness to sell Starlink’s services. It’s worth noting that Starlink does, in fact, support reseller agreements specifically for business customers.
Conclusions
In conclusion, there’s little more to add beyond the observation that Sure Falkland Islands’ current business model appears fragile and overly reliant on its monopoly position and the absence of meaningful competition. Rather than viewing Starlink’s arrival as an impetus for innovation, Sure is signalling that it may not be able to compete and could even withdraw if faced with an open market. This represents the first step on the ladder to insolvency.
These assertions expose structural weaknesses in Sure’s business approach and resistance to adapting to a more competitive landscape. Yet, this situation should be seen by Sure not as a threat but as an opportunity for strategic evolution and service improvement. FIG must foster a competitive environment focused on consumer benefit and technological progress, encouraging Sure to modernise rather than retreat.
Toward the end of the presentation, the presenter was asked: “Does Sure intend to challenge FIG’s decision to support the petitioner’s demands in any way – specifically, through legal action against the government?”. The response was: “We’re trying to find a solution that avoids taking any kind of legal action because I don’t think that’s a good outcome for anyone at all.”
I believe all islanders and stakeholders would wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment.
5 a.m. conclusions – why the above conclusions are inadequate
I woke up at 5 a.m. this morning and felt that the previous conclusion was insufficient and lacked the specificity required to address the situation facing the islands so I’ve expanded it a little.
The presenter made the following heartfelt statements:
“Thank you, as a business, we’re working flat out as a team to bring the very best services that we can to the Falkland Islands and I acknowledge that we need to catch up and that we’ve got ground to make. And I also acknowledge that it can be better and it should be better as well.”
“We feel that with these solutions overlaid on top of what we do today, that we are going to improve things a significant amount. So, you know, as I said, you’ve got our attention and we’re working flat out to try to achieve that end. And that’s what I want to remain focused on because I believe that there is a solution. That will give everyone who has signed the petition what they want. Maybe not 100%, but most of what you’ve asked for. And in a way that, you know, sure means that we still can continue to operate and provide all of the services as well.”
Sure Falkland Islands has undoubtedly shown commendable efforts to innovate, particularly by announcing quota-free services via Intelsat GEO satellites and offering lower-latency services based on OneWeb’s LEO service. These initiatives deserve credit. However, neither solution adequately meets the needs of most consumers who expect fast, reliable Internet akin to what Starlink provides. This demand was at the heart of last summer’s highly successful petition, and the presentation’s audience contended that it was “too little, too late”.
As repeatedly stated during the presentations, OneWeb’s limited capacity confines its usefulness primarily to “end of the line” Camp users and specific business applications in Stanley rather than serving the broader population’s needs.
In essence, Sure has become a casualty of rapid technological change, a force that takes no prisoners. Their early commitment to a limited LEO solution has left them boxed in, especially when juxtaposed with Starlink’s customer-focused, direct-to-consumer business model, which embodies the very ethos of the modern Internet.
History shows that technological shifts cannot be halted by resisting their adoption. The same pattern played out when minicomputers overtook mainframes, only for minicomputers themselves to be displaced by desktop PCs. The rise of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) decimated traditional voice carrier revenue streams – C&W being a prime example – causing trillions of dollars in losses across the telecom industry. Likewise, equipment manufacturers who clung to outdated protocols like Frame Relay and ATM vanished as Internet-based technologies took over. Can AI be held back?
Survival in this landscape requires adaptation. Companies can only thrive by recognising hard truths and pivoting decisively toward the new realities technology creates. Lofty objectives by Sure such as “we need to catch up and we’ve got ground to make up” will only be achieved through bold, actionable strategies and not attempts to hold back inevitable progress.
One thing I do know is that come what may, Starlink will play a significant role in the near-term future telecommunications landscape of the Falkland Islands.
Chris Gare, OpenFalklands March 2025, copyright OpenFalklands
Sure must make s profit to stay in the Falklands and if they lose the “vsat” business what else do they really have? I’m sure the mobile business must be revenue neutral and if they pull out who would come in and replace them.