Regulator disrupts Starlink services during Tonga's ongoing communications crisis
Friday, July 12, 2024 - 23:59
Last Tuesday 9 July, Tonga's communications Regulator, MEIDECC, notified Starlink, the global satellite internet network, to cut off all services to its roaming subscribers across Tonga's land and seas. The government will not allow the use of Starlink in the current ongoing communications crisis in Tonga, because they have not given Starlink's fixed broadband services a license to operate here. The regulator is not allowing the roaming services either, after the nation's domestic fiber optic cable failed on 29 June. “With understanding of the inconvenience, at the same time the law cannot be put aside just because you have slow internet,” the Prime Minister told Starlink users yesterday, many of whom had raised safety concerns.
Comments
I don't want to go on record
I don't want to go on record for fear of reprisals from the Prime minister but the question that needs asking is what law are we breaking? I've been in touch with a lawyer and the current vsat license that they are making us all pay for is not valid for starlink as starlink is a low earth orbit satellite. We are sure what we are all doing with the roaming from NZ and Oz is not illegal here in Tonga. The Govt do have the right to ask starlink to switch off, but for what reason if it is not a legal one? - [Name and address supplied].
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