What Happened When a Pacific Island Was Cut Off From the Internet (theguardian.com) 38
The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano erupted on January 15, 2022. The pyroclastic flow severed both of Tonga's underwater internet cables. The eruption cut sixty-five miles from the domestic cable and fifty-five miles from the international link to Fiji. Tonga lost all internet access. The cables sit on the ocean floor and carry 95% of the world's international internet traffic.
The Guardian has a long read on what happened in the aftermath. A.T.M.s (cash machines) stopped working because banks could not verify account balances. Businesses could not file export paperwork. Foreign remittances made up 44% of the country's G.D.P. The government found old satellite phones. Three or four days later, officials restored a hundred and twenty megabytes per second of bandwidth for essential work. A month after the eruption, SpaceX donated fifty Starlink terminals. SubCom's repair ship Reliance took five weeks to restore the international cable. Vava'u did not get broadband back until August, 2023. Another earthquake in the summer of 2024 severed the domestic cable again.
The Guardian has a long read on what happened in the aftermath. A.T.M.s (cash machines) stopped working because banks could not verify account balances. Businesses could not file export paperwork. Foreign remittances made up 44% of the country's G.D.P. The government found old satellite phones. Three or four days later, officials restored a hundred and twenty megabytes per second of bandwidth for essential work. A month after the eruption, SpaceX donated fifty Starlink terminals. SubCom's repair ship Reliance took five weeks to restore the international cable. Vava'u did not get broadband back until August, 2023. Another earthquake in the summer of 2024 severed the domestic cable again.
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guess George Lucas was right (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
You need to study pacific island ecology. There are reasons why many were cannibals...the only proteins available were fish...and most of those are low fats. Topical plants produce lots of carbs...and not much else. (Yeah, they imported pigs onto many of the larger islands, but most of them are too small for that.)
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Pigs are relatively large animals. Small islands don't support enough genetic diversity. (Well, that's my guess. Perhaps there's another answer...like small islands don't have multiple water sources or something.)
Whatever the reason, the fact remains. Possibly small islands are inhabited by people wherever it's possible to live. Small narrow islands don't have much interior.
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Pigs still require food, that food comes from somewhere.
And if you had "smart" light bulbs... (Score:2, Insightful)
You woudn't have been able to turn them off or on because the internet is down. We are in the stupid future.
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I have smart light bulbs, they turn off and on just fine without internet. My smart thermostat keeps working just fine without internet. Even Spotify has a shitton of songs cached which play when I don't have internet.
It sounds like you're raging against your own imagination.
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Maybe things have changed, but my smart lights run entirely on their own not wifi network. The switches and light bulbs all operate on their own low power network independent of my home wifi.
For me to program new ones or change the settings (which switches control which lights how) I need my home wifi network up, but I do not need Internet, this is all done locally.
Additionally, the lights all have a fallback that if they lose power and then it's restored they operate like regular lightbulbs.
The only thing
Porn (Score:3)
The list of effects forgot, "people had to revert to getting their porn through magazines, rather than over the internet."
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I hope you're willing to share. I'd like to see those.
MaterialsSci research on Fiber optic elasticity? (Score:1)
Amazing, the sea floor heaving so much that glass fiber optics fracture.
about 50 miles away from 'eruption-center' of the volcano uprising.
All that damage, that far away. I surmise the glass fibers snapped from whip-lash effect?
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Amazing, the sea floor heaving so much that glass fiber optics fracture.
about 50 miles away from 'eruption-center' of the volcano uprising.
All that damage, that far away. I surmise the glass fibers snapped from whip-lash effect?
Seems like with an anchor and a solid styrofoam buoy or similar, they could float the line a few feet above the sea floor on a flexible tether and prevent this problem more permanently.
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Russia and China thank you for making the cables much easier to snag with anchors.
Occasionally you get meter-plus slips, even far from the epicenter, and those could strain the cable pretty severely even with a tether to provide slack.
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Russia and China thank you for making the cables much easier to snag with anchors.
You're welcome?
Occasionally you get meter-plus slips, even far from the epicenter, and those could strain the cable pretty severely even with a tether to provide slack.
Depends in part on whether the cable is allowed to slide freely in the tether loop. If it is, then any extra length can come from the entire cable, or at least a large enough portion of the cable to prevent it from snapping, I would think.
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I wish this news was better (Score:1)
Thank goodness ... (Score:2)
7 Day certs? (Score:4, Interesting)
There are proposals to have 7 day SSL/TLS certs. This is an example of why that could be a major problem. Many Islands are connected by one cable with an old satellite system as backup. Emergency satellite links often don't comply with the local law of the disconnected country or the downlink station.
Re: 7 Day certs? (Score:2)
Maybe don't locate e-commerce server farms on backwater Polynesian islands with poor connectivity?
Just a thought...
Seems inaccurate (Score:2)
So my traffic from North America to Europe goes thru Tonga?
Please, find a better "hero" (Score:1)
The world may be saved from disaster by Elon Musk? gag me!
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They just donated the terminals, they still had to pay for the subscriptions
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They just donated the terminals, they still had to pay for the subscriptions
The Tongan prime minister said the subscription fees were waived during the emergency period,
"The Minister said SpaceX will provide free service during the emergency period until the undersea fiber-optic cable system is fully restored to serve the public." https://www.tesmanian.com/blog... [tesmanian.com]
"Mr Sovaleni said Mr Musk set up a Starlink gateway station in Fiji and was donating 50 VSAT terminals and free capacity âoeduring the emergency periodâ." https://www.independent.co.uk/... [independent.co.uk]
EMP (Score:1)
Elon Musk and his free internet. (Score:2)
I think it's very inequitable that Elon musk is able to unilaterally either grant or not grant free internet to people. If he's not willing to activate free internet for the Ukrainian to operate star link in Russian zones, violating Federal law, then he shouldn't be allowed to give these guys for the internet either.
Re: Elon Musk and his free internet. (Score:2)
What a stupid hot-take.
Starlink isnt a charity, but musk provided free starlink to Ukraine military for a ling time, and when he asked to be paid for it but the US gov't, democrats said "Nyet"
Why not get mad at GM for not giving Ukraine free Humvees?
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Horseshit. SpaceX voluntarily donated Starlink before the government got involved. The government (under the democrats) then donated about 40% more to the cause. At no point have the Democrats said "Nyet", they have only said they do not support re-imbursement of charitable donations by SpaceX, all the while continuing to fund Starlink expansion in Ukraine. Or maybe you think this is how it should work, in which case I'm going to go buy a new gaming monitor and send you the bill for it.
Yes the OP's hot take
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5000 terminals were sent to Ukraine at the opening of the invasion. 1,333 of that initial batch, and I think the shipping for all of them, were paid for by USAID with the remainder being a SpaceX donation. SpaceX donated ongoing service. I am not finding any references to USAID paying for service for the hardware they purchased. This initial batch of hardware and associated subscriptions rolled out February to April of 2022.
Separately, several European countries also started purchasing hardware and subs
120 Megabytes per second (Score:1)
What? (Score:2)
The cables sit on the ocean floor and carry 95% of the world's international internet traffic.
Really? 95% of the WORLD'S International traffic passes thru cables in Tonga?
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Yeah I called BS when I first read this too. Then, thinking about it some more I went to fetch my 1:1000 topological map of the pacific basin with all the underwater telecommunications cable routes overlaid..... Dang it! I *hate* when I misplace that thing.
Anyway, it is *possible* that 95% of the international traffic crossing the pacific runs through that on cable - assuming it has the bandwidth capacity for that - as the shortest hop across the pacific. Without it all that traffic is now routed around t
racist (Score:2)
Um, just even the name, "Hunga Tonga-Hunga", is racist. Straight out of a 1920's B movie.