Will service support be the game changer for the game changers? Australian IT service provider NETVAULT, now synonymous with SpaceX’s Starlink satellite broadband Internet for business services in Fiji, is probably the closest Fiji would get to technical service support from Starlink.
The company, according to its technical director Radek Tkaczyk, has been doing this in Australia for the last two years since Starlink became available there and later, in New Zealand and now Fiji.
“This is the void that we’re trying to fill to make Starlink suitable for business use,” Mr Tkaczyk said in an interview with The Fiji Times.
“An important part of our offering is we do the monitoring. We install the actual monitoring nodes and we monitor the connections. So we have all this data that we share with our customers about their Internet connection, so we can troubleshoot and provide the management, the technical support, all the monitoring so if there’s an issue, there is someone to call.”
NETVAULT, according to Mr Tkaczyk, has a team of 130 service technicians around Australia that does installations.
“We have 20 in New Zealand and we’re just starting up a team of six here in Fiji to be able to do the same of what we do in Australia, New Zealand in Fiji.”
NETVAULT’s commercial agreement with SpaceX means it can modify Starlink’s receiver dishes (for business) and repackage it with its own proprietary hardware, such as the NETVAULT poles that prop up the dishes on rooftops, engineered by the company “with wind ratings of up to 237 kilometers an hour”.
Or the military-grade suitcases it has redesigned to properly encase Starlink hardware ready to be dispatched to natural disaster zones as Rapid Deployment Kits in emergency situations.
Among its latest Starlink hardware solution is its custom made radomes that “specifically allow the Ka and Ku frequencies for Starlink through unimpeded”, hence protecting the dishes from the elements. Ideal, said Mr Tkaczyk, for yachts and vehicles.
No doubt, the relatively new Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite technology revolutionised by SpaceX through its re-usable rocket technology is redefining universal connectivity, especially for the remote and rural Pacific where archipelagic nations are separated by miles and miles of ocean.
But anyone waiting for Starlink to come to the Pacific to physically provide that connection would be misguided. The infrastructure is already in the sky – over 5000 LEO satellites in orbit 500 kilometers above earth. To connect, all it takes is a Starlink dish.
All else is left to the customer to figure out, either by using Starlink’s FAQs on its website or, for the more sophisticated business needs, companies like NETVAULT for technical and customer service support.
Starlink however is not the only one interested in the Pacific. LEO peer OneWeb, which has been in the LEO business longer than Starlink, is also on its way. Unlike Starlink’s reputed invisibility to customers, OneWeb, already in Australia, is the total opposite.
More importantly, it comes with technical support, which makes a world of difference for customers. In Fiji, OneWeb will be partnering with the Fiji International Telecommunications Ltd (FINTEL), who will be hosting its gateway.
“The Fiji teleport will allow OneWeb to supply high-speed internet services to businesses, government institutions, and vertical markets, connecting Fijian territory and surrounding waters,” FINTEL announced last year.
“With much of its global network already deployed, the OneWeb constellation, which enjoys valuable ITU-backed priority spectrum rights, will operate 648 satellites in low orbit offering low latency, high speed connectivity.”
Space Internet may be a watershed moment in the history of global telecommunications but at the end of the day, the availability and quality of customer support service is still key