Confusion on the Falkland Islands Over Status of Starlink’s Broadband
Monday, Feb 10th, 2025
Good news, SpaceX’s global Starlink broadband network is currently listed as finally coming to the poorly served Falkland Islands, which is a British Overseas Territory, sometime in 2025. Bad news, the service is already being used by hundreds of local customers and the company has just started to cut them off.
At present there are about 3,700 people living and working on the largely self-governing and self-sufficient Falkland Islands, where all of the fixed line (phone, broadband) services and mobile networks are still supplied by a limited Satellite data link from the dominant provider, Sure (Sure Falklands Islands).
NOTE: Starlink customers in the UK typically pay from £75 a month for a 30-day term, plus £299 for hardware on the ‘Standard’ unlimited data plan (inc. £19 postage), which promises latency times of 25-60ms, downloads of 25-100Mbps and uploads of 5-10Mbps.
The islands, which are a British Overseas Territory that resides nearly 500km 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 probably isn’t going to be considered particularly viable or wise any time soon.
On top of that, the islands are incredibly remote, which even in an ideal political environment would still make running a subsea fibre optic line incredibly expensive. Suffice to say, internet access has never been particularly fast, with the top package from Sure offering 10Mbps (capped data usage of 364GB) and even that’ll cost you.. wait for it.. £467 per month! Sure did say they launched an “unlimited” 15Mbps plan last year, but we couldn’t find it.
Needless to say, residents have long been campaigning for the Falkland Islands Government (FIG) to work with SpaceX in order to approve the use of its Starlink based broadband service on the island, which reflects a mega constellation of satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). This would be able to offer a significantly faster and more flexible service for a lot less money (note: we don’t know if Starlink will do a Falklands-specific plan, so the details may not match the UK).
The good news is that the FIG is currently expected to grant the necessary approval around April 2025 and a quick look at the map on Starlink’s website similarly shows that the Falklands is now listed with the tag – “Starting in 2025” (credits to Danny for spotting that one). This would be a blow to ‘Sure’, albeit good news for residents. But our story doesn’t end there.
Residents are already using Starlink
At present, hundreds of residents on the Falklands are in fact already using Starlink terminals via the roaming feature. But Sure currently holds the main (monopoly) telecommunications licence on the islands, which technically means that using Starlink there is still illegal (i.e. the terminals are unlicensed). Despite this, the FIG’s work to change this means that the local government hasn’t really clamped down on the practice.
The above context is important because Starlink recently sent a notice to customers on the islands to inform them that they were “currently using Starlink in an unauthorized territory” and that “local telecommunication authorities” had instructed them to “disable your services“. Interestingly, both the FIG and the Communications Regulator (FICR) promptly denied any involvement with the action.
FICR Statement
Despite the wording of the communication from Starlink, FIG has not instructed Starlink to carry out this action. Further information will be sought from Starlink, but it is understood by FIG that Starlink may be enforcing its own policy on roaming packages that have remained fixed in place for 60 days or more, and which form part of the terms and conditions of use.
As stated in the press statement issued on 3rd February 2025, Starlink has not applied for regulatory approval, though some exploratory discussions have taken place.
The Starlink policy above refers to the fact that they allow users to access the internet in different locations around the world. But this is only allowable for a maximum of 60 days outside of their registered service address within a given year and, after that, they must return to their primary location.
Sadly, some Starlink users on the islands have since reported that they’ve begun to experience service interruptions as their 60-day “roaming period expired” – all of this is being well covered by the excellent Open Falklands blog. In response, the FICR has said they’ve engaged with Starlink who “will work to keep the service on“, but there are still some complexities to be addressed around how VSAT licensing is handled on the island.
Hopefully, a more permanent solution will surface sooner, rather than later. Legalising and normalising access to Starlink for all users could make the Falklands a much more attractive place to both visit and do business.
