Proposals for Enhanced Broadband facilities in St. Helena

St. Helena is a small island belonging to Britain, and is situated in the South Atlantic. It has a population of about 4000 people. The residents of this little island have to depend on financial help from the UK and this implies that they invariably are found wanting in practically everything and that would also mean telecommunication services with the world outside their small island. The whole lot of people living on the island has just one satellite Internet connection that is a mere 10Mbit per second which can be compared to twice the average speed of two broadband connections in the UK that is distributed to 100 users. This just gives an idea of the limited comforts that people in St. Helena enjoy.

This current year 2Five Telecoms would be laying the fastest fibre optic line via St. Helena so as to link South Africa with Brazil. This would be known as the south Atlantic express or SAex. This line would offer bandwidth of 12.8Tbit per second, passing just a couple of kilometres north of this tiny island. Currently the proposed route of the cable would be too distant from St. Helena and it would not be viable to lay another branch cable to link the island. Christian von der Ropp of Connect in St. Helena suggests that if the line could be moved just a wee bit to the south of the planned route, it would be much closer to the island. They are only asking for 155 Mbit/s of the 12.8 Tbit/s and this would still be fifteen and a half times in excess of what they currently have.

There are many points that require to be done such that this plan could work out. The first and major thing is that Connect believes that 2Five Telecoms would have to be convinced to lay their cables a little to the south, so that they would run closer to the island. Further the government of the UK may have to finance cost of the additional cabling that will be required to ensure that the SAex could be taken to St. Helena. And last but in no way the least would be that they would have to get an African or a Brazilian carrier to rent out an OC-3 circuit to the island as the island may not be able to afford to purchase one which anyway would be superfluous.