What Starlink could offer Home Affairs

Daniel Puchert said:
Fixing "The system is offline" with Starlink

SpaceX's satellite Internet service Starlink could significantly boost connectivity for Home Affairs offices in remote areas with poor or no broadband while also saving the government department some money.

Department of Home Affairs (DHA) branches require reliable Internet connectivity to link up with the National Population Register, which is required for identity verification.
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Never gonna happen.

A BBBEE company running 256Kbps radio towers will get a R10m grant from government of which R9m will go missing....
 
Swa said:
Some fibre does contain some copper, but it's mainly the plastic structures that contain chemicals you can smoke.
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Is that not an urban legend? Surely there are easier ways to score? Is it not more mistaken identity caused by the darwin effect?
 
Daniel Puchert said:
Fixing "The system is offline" with Starlink

SpaceX's satellite Internet service Starlink could significantly boost connectivity for Home Affairs offices in remote areas with poor or no broadband while also saving the government department some money.

Department of Home Affairs (DHA) branches require reliable Internet connectivity to link up with the National Population Register, which is required for identity verification.
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@Daniel Puchert

How about trying to find out, what the "SLA terms" are for these DHA sites - cost per month for the 2Mbps and the lease period remaining?
 
lordnokon said:
@Daniel Puchert

How about trying to find out, what the "SLA terms" are for these DHA sites - cost per month for the 2Mbps and the lease period remaining?
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Simple answer to that...

Way more than you'd ever pay for a 2Mbps link (even a dedicated one) and with an SLA that probably makes the "best-effort" of our residential fibre providers look absolutely amazing.

But as for getting the actual numbers and details, SITA and HA will just go "Nope, commercially sensitive"
 
ToxicBunny said:
Simple answer to that...

Way more than you'd ever pay for a 2Mbps link (even a dedicated one) and with an SLA that probably makes the "best-effort" of our residential fibre providers look absolutely amazing.

But as for getting the actual numbers and details, SITA and HA will just go "Nope, commercially sensitive"
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  • There are three SLA levels with SITA. Let's just say WYSINWYAG.
  • Cost: I am not sure it is allowed to be disclosed. For people doing work with sensitive departments like DHA there is the equivalent of a State Secret contract.
  • There is no lease contract with SITA. It is legislation that SITA provides the service; there needs to be a Parliamentary exemption (forgot the term) to not use them.
Also, this article is speculation, which is frustrating... People are making a lot of assumptions about what's causing the OFFLINE issues - even the article quoting the Minister.

Yes, at face value it would seem the answer is to simply improve bandwidth but this is a very naive answer based on hunches without interrogating the facts and the data.

Suffice to say, there are other things that have been identified (and addressed) that has had a marked improvement on the system, and some sites are pilot sites to confirm this.

Things need to be done methodically because of the nature of the services and the criticality of the system service.
 
brattex said:
  • There are three SLA levels with SITA. Let's just say WYSINWYAG.
  • Cost: I am not sure it is allowed to be disclosed. For people doing work with sensitive departments like DHA there is the equivalent of a State Secret contract.
  • There is no lease contract with SITA. It is legislation that SITA provides the service; there needs to be a Parliamentary exemption (forgot the term) to not use them.
Also, this article is speculation, which is frustrating... People are making a lot of assumptions about what's causing the OFFLINE issues - even the article quoting the Minister.

Yes, at face value it would seem the answer is to simply improve bandwidth but this is a very naive answer based on hunches without interrogating the facts and the data.

Suffice to say, there are other things that have been identified (and addressed) that has had a marked improvement on the system, and some sites are pilot sites to confirm this.

Things need to be done methodically because of the nature of the services and the criticality of the system service.
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100%, I'm aware that the problems are significantly more than just bandwidth but its HA and SITA... they're fun to bash around a bit every so often.

From my experience at an HA office the system design is significantly more problematic than the network link involved in the process.
 
ToxicBunny said:
100%, I'm aware that the problems are significantly more than just bandwidth but its HA and SITA... they're fun to bash around a bit every so often.
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Yeah, I wasn't directing my frustration at you FWIW. The author of the article is stirring up a lot of armchair expertise which isn't based on actual knowledge of the situation, so it's a bit frustrating 😅

Let's say that the former Minister shouldn't be faulted for sitting around not trying to fix things there. There are literally a lot of politics and no organisation would want to allow their cash-cow to be handed over to a rival for milking...
 
brattex said:
Yeah, I wasn't directing my frustration at you FWIW. The author of the article is stirring up a lot of armchair expertise which isn't based on actual knowledge of the situation, so it's a bit frustrating 😅

Let's say that the former Minister shouldn't be faulted for sitting around not trying to fix things there. There are literally a lot of politics and no organisation would want to allow their cash-cow to be handed over to a rival for milking...
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Yeah I know :D... and as always these articles give a glimpse of things but the complexity means an article will always get it mostly wrong.

I do think the former Minister should be faulted though, I do get that there are lots of politics and all that but this country suffers while these idiots play politics and factional battles.
 
brattex said:
Yeah, I wasn't directing my frustration at you FWIW. The author of the article is stirring up a lot of armchair expertise which isn't based on actual knowledge of the situation, so it's a bit frustrating 😅

Let's say that the former Minister shouldn't be faulted for sitting around not trying to fix things there. There are literally a lot of politics and no organisation would want to allow their cash-cow to be handed over to a rival for milking...
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Let me also add, that there are of course many reasons for the perceived slow resolution, with some being the obvious ones that folks all know and suspect, but there are other reasons for the slow progress which are more legitimate in any organisation or culture... Although, maybe still slower than it ought to be if you ask some of those involved 😀

It may be a slow process, but it's improving 🤐
 
ToxicBunny said:
Yeah I know :D... and as always these articles give a glimpse of things but the complexity means an article will always get it mostly wrong.

I do think the former Minister should be faulted though, I do get that there are lots of politics and all that but this country suffers while these idiots play politics and factional battles.
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I can't comment 🤣(👍👍💯)🤣

Re; the article... It feels like someone stared up at the sky, imagined Starlink, and decided this is an excellent idea and threw an article together to address one single isolated factor that IN ISOLATION might seem like the solution, but it also inadvertently implies that no-one else has thought of this and thus there is a serious dearth of smart and hard-working experts to offer insights who are connected to the inner-circles and decision-making... 😀

Sometimes there are legitimate efforts being made but when you have non-experts adjudicating they have to go with what they're convinced by the loudest and most expensive legal people in the room. Not saying this is right, but this is circumstance...

If someone is asked to defend their right to hang onto their monopoly and they can charge whatever they want for it, they will make a very very very compelling case to hoodwink others.
 
ToxicBunny said:
So no...

They would be running on dedicated circuits (be it cabled or vsat/microwave) provisioned by Sita to each office... And Fibre isn't an option for many of them since they're in rural areas.
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Yip. Those would be High-bitrate DSL lines.
Can't see how they could provide the Post Office with fibre links, but not other departments.
 
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