When the Incumbent Leaves: What Ascension’s Experience Tells Us About the Falklands’ Choice

I wrote about the major change in telecommunications on Ascension Island back in January 2026 – Ascension’s Telecoms Turning Point and What It May Signal for the Falklands. Consider this an update with the benefit of several more months of evidence.

When the Ascension Island Government (AIG) announced in December 2025 that it had selected Omnitouch Network Services to replace Sure South Atlantic as its telecommunications provider, many would have noted the parallel with the Falklands. Here was a remote British Overseas Territory, with a population under a thousand, that had just demonstrated something previously considered unlikely: a credible alternative to Sure actually exists.

The Ascension experience deserves a closer look; not as a template to be copied, but as a real-world case study from which the Falkland Islands can draw useful lessons, both positive and cautionary.

What happened on Ascension?

Sure South Atlantic exited Ascension on 28 February 2026, and Ascension Island Mobile,  the new entity set up by the AIG and built on Omnitouch’s infrastructure, launched the following day. By all accounts, the new network’s coverage is already superior to Sure’s, reaching areas of the island that previously had no signal.

Fixed-line services were not immediately available. Some residents initially found they could no longer use their existing numbers for two-factor authentication with international banking services, while international roaming arrangements also took time to establish. It’s most likely that this latter issue could be attributed to the very short notice period Sure gave to the AIG.

The AIG acknowledged the likelihood of disruption from the outset, which was the right approach. But the experience illustrates that even when an alternative provider is willing and capable, transitions in small, remote markets carry real short-term risk.

We should also remember that if Starlink’s arrival made Ascension commercially unviable for Sure, the same dynamic is already playing out in the Falklands at a larger scale.

Why did Sure leave Ascension?

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the Ascension story is not the arrival of Omnitouch but the departure of Sure South Atlantic itself.

Sure had operated telecommunications services on Ascension for many years. Yet in August 2025, it gave notice of its intention to withdraw, bringing an end to its involvement just seven months later.

Although the company has not published a detailed explanation, it was widely understood that market economics had changed significantly following Starlink’s arrival. As residents increasingly adopted Starlink for broadband, Sure faced the prospect of retaining responsibility for maintaining the island’s telecommunications infrastructure while receiving much lower revenues from traditional services.

Ascension is an extremely small market, with fewer than 1,000 residents. In such an environment, the loss of broadband customers can have a disproportionate effect on the overall viability of the business. Maintaining and modernising networks in a remote location is expensive, and the remaining revenues may simply no longer justify the investment required. At least, that is what Sure appears to have concluded.

It is also notable that the replacement arrangement adopted by the Ascension Island Government differed from the traditional model. Under the new structure, infrastructure costs were shared between the government and Omnitouch, with support from the FCDO  and RAF logistics. Rather than simply replacing Sure with another vertically integrated operator, the commercial structure itself changed, reducing the financial risk borne by the network provider and giving AIG greater control over its future.

Whatever the precise reasons, the Ascension experience demonstrates that the presence of an incumbent operator cannot be taken for granted. Telecommunications providers make commercial decisions, and those decisions do not always align with the long-term interests of the communities they serve.

For the Falklands, the lesson may be that resilience comes not from assuming that a single operator will always remain, but from ensuring credible alternatives and transition plans are in place long before they are needed.

An Unanswered Question

One aspect of the Ascension story has not, to my knowledge, been publicly addressed. Sure’s departure was widely understood to result from the collapse of its broadband revenue following Starlink’s approval; the existing vertically-integrated commercial model simply no longer worked for a market of Ascension’s size. Yet when Omnitouch was brought in, AIG adopted a fundamentally different financial structure, with infrastructure costs shared among the government, Omnitouch, the FCDO, and the RAF.

This raises an obvious question. If a restructured, cost-shared model made the economics work for a new entrant, why was a similar arrangement not explored with Sure as an alternative to its departure? Sure had years of local knowledge, established infrastructure and an existing presence on the island.

There may be good reasons. Perhaps such an approach was offered and declined. Perhaps AIG concluded that the issues went beyond financial structure alone. Or perhaps, once notice had been given, the opportunity was taken to bring in a different operator with more modern technology, with the VoLTE-based network discussed below providing a clear example of the improvements that resulted.

Whatever the explanation, the question is relevant to the Falklands. If a new financial model with a new operator delivered a better outcome for Ascension than adapting the existing arrangement with the incumbent, that is a real-world data point worth weighing carefully as FIG considers its choice between reform and renewal.

Who is Omnitouch?

Omnitouch is an Australian company that specialises in designing, building, and operating cellular networks in remote and geographically challenging environments. Its model, Mobile Network as a Service (MNaaS), is a turnkey approach in which the company delivers and manages all core network components, allowing the contracting government or operator to focus on customer-facing services rather than infrastructure. Its track record includes work in Alaska, Central America, the Pacific and Indian Ocean Islands, and notably Norfolk Island in the Pacific, where it established a modern 4G network for a community of around 2,000 people, a scale not entirely dissimilar to Stanley.

AIM’s network features

Ascension Island Mobile’s 4G LTE network has been designed to provide comprehensive coverage across the island, including all populated areas and frequently used roads, and to extend several kilometres offshore.

It is also a thoroughly modern network, supporting Voice over LTE (VoLTE), which enables voice calls to be carried directly over the 4G network. This is particularly interesting from a Falklands perspective. In the Falklands, voice calls are still carried over the legacy 2G network, with the 4G network used solely for data services. In 2026, reliance on 2G for voice services has become something of an anomaly internationally, highlighting how modernisation of the Falklands mobile network could have been achieved much earlier with an appropriate investment, but wasn’t.

What could this mean for the Falklands?

The Falkland Islands are materially different from Ascension. The population is larger, economic activity is more diverse, and the infrastructure requirements are considerably more complex, spanning Stanley, the Camp, Mount Pleasant, and a dispersed rural population. A like-for-like comparison is not straightforward.

That said, several lessons from Ascension are directly relevant.

First, specialist operators of this kind do exist and are willing to enter small, remote markets. The common view that “there is no realistic alternative to Sure” is weaker than it once was. Omnitouch is not the only such company; others, including those active in comparable island environments, have demonstrated similar capabilities.  It seems reasonable to assume that many such operators responded to Cambridge Management Consulting and FIG’s PME programme in the latter half of 2025.

Second, the Ascension experience confirms that transitions require time. The compressed handover on Ascension created avoidable difficulties. For the Falklands, this reinforces the argument that planning needs to begin well in advance of December 2027, not in response to it.

Third, government posture matters enormously. The AIG was explicit about managing risk, communicating openly with residents, and acknowledging that disruption was possible. That transparency, even where it was uncomfortable, built public understanding. FIG would do well to adopt a similar approach as it considers the post-2027 landscape.

Fourth, funding is a real question. The Ascension transition was funded by the FCDO. The Falklands operates with greater financial autonomy, which means that any comparable transition, or indeed any major infrastructure investment, would need to be funded from a constrained public budget or secured through other means. This is not a reason to avoid planning, but it is a reason to start early.

A model worth watching

The Omnitouch model on Ascension is still in its early stages. Fixed-line and broadband services continue to develop, and it will take time to assess their longer-term performance. OpenFalklands will continue to monitor developments.

For the Falklands, the most valuable takeaway from Ascension is not that the same solution should be replicated, but that a post-monopoly telecommunications landscape is no longer a theoretical proposition. It is already happening under near-identical geographic and regulatory conditions in comparable British Overseas Territory jurisdictions elsewhere in the South Atlantic.

The question for FIG and MLAs is whether to watch that experiment unfold from a distance, or to use it as one input into a deliberate, well-planned approach to the Falklands’ own telecommunications future.