Stanley, Falkland Islands town hall
Hot on the heels of the Sure Falkland Islands presentation last week and my critiques of some of the comments made over the weekend – post 1, post 2 and post 3 follows the presentation by Cambridge Management Consultants discussing some aspects of the future of telecommunications on the islands.
But first:
Thursday 20th March 2025:
Penguin News’ report on the Sure Falkland Islands presentation.
( Source: Thank you, Penguin News)
Friday, 21st March 2025:
Listen to an interview with Andrew Beak, CEO of Sure International who gave the two presentations last week. I missed the first few minutes of the interview because I pressed the wrong button. Sorry!
(Source: Thank you, Falkland Islands Radio Service)
Tuesday, 25th March 2025
On Tuesday, 25th March, Cambridge Management Consulting gave a talk at the town hall about the future of telecommunications technologies in the Falkland Islands.
The presenters were: Tim Passingham, Erling Aronsveen and Clive Quantrill from CMC, Becky Clark from DCS and Simon Bradshaw with the Q&As. There were 30 to 40 attendees.
Given the significant dropouts and quality issues, there was more than touch of irony in the technology presentation broadcast by Falkland Islands Radio Service. In contrast to the Petition Group’s town hall meeting last July, which used Starlink to deliver a high-quality audio stream, FIRS had to rely on the inadequacies of local services. Understandably, using Starlink may have been ‘challenging’ considering it was an official FIG event – but what about OneWeb? Reportedly, poor Wi-Fi in the town hall led to the FIRS dropouts.
Because of these issues, there are two recordings to choose from.
The audio quality of this recording is not brilliant, but it is complete. It was a recording made by an attendee on their mobile phone.
This is the FIRS broadcast where the audio is much clearer, but with the dropouts and in-music removed!
(Source: Thank you, Falkland Islands Radio Service)
One interesting point made by Tim Passingham in answer to a question that might indicate Cambridge’s views was: “We think that choice is going to be key and we think non-exclusivity is key to that”.
Cambridge’s presentation slides
I will post the slides shown by Cambridge as soon as I receive them.
Chris Gare, OpenFalklands March 2025, copyright OpenFalklands
Has Sure or any commented on the impact about the withdrawal of 2G and POTS in the UK and eventually worldwide? DCS and MLAs had a note from me how the world is transitioning on to VoLTE and RCS.
Not that I’ve heard Tim, but I do know they do not use VoLTE. How many still use 2G stuff in the islands these days?
All mobile voice calls are still routed via the 2G/GSM network, the phones switch to that to connect a voice call, and then switch back to LTE (or sometimes don’t!) at the end of the call. This was confirmed by somebody to me just recently.