Much of the preceding telecommunications infrastructure between Saint Helena and Ascension was laid in 1899 by the Eastern Telegraph Company, later Cable & Wireless plc and Sure South Atlantic, as part of the British need to track the Second Boer War.
[4] They have an exclusive license from the St Helena Government to operate the aforementioned services, with the current licence running to 1 July 2025.
All of St Helena's international connectivity was by satellite until the activation of the Equiano submarine cable in October 2023.
[5] New telecoms legislation and new license terms are being drafted by the government, with the arrival of subsea cable access.
Telecom services in St Helena are comparatively expensive, for example, all TV channels are encrypted and a subscription costs amount to more than one tenth of an average worker's salary.
The station presented news, features and music in collaboration with its sister newspaper, the St Helena Herald.
It broadcast news, features and music in collaboration with its sister newspaper, the St Helena Independent (which continues).
[15] Sure SA offers television for the island via 17 digital encrypted DVB-T2 channels, which rebroadcast a compilation of British and South African programmes provided by MultiChoice.
[17] Television services first arrived in 1995 using 3 analogue encrypted TV channels, rebroadcasting a variety of foreign content from satellite.
[21] The current digital broadcasting network using the DVB-T2 standard was installed on the island in late 2011, replacing the old analogue system.
[4] They have an exclusive license from the St Helena Government to operate the aforementioned services, with the current licence running to 1 July 2025.
All of St Helena's international connectivity was by satellite until the activation of the Equiano submarine cable in October 2023.
[5] Sure SA operate an on island fibre backbone connecting most exchanges, cell sites and important institutions, with microwave links providing access to some areas.
[31] Installation began in April 2014,[32] however the contracted network equipment supplier, Altobridge, went into receivership, the procurement process had to be restarted, postponing the launch date.
[33] The deployed network, after the second procurement, added 4G connectivity and is based on network equipment from Canadian Star Solutions International Inc. providing GSM-900 and LTE band 3 (1800 MHz) and Primal Technologies providing Advance Pay/Prepaid, SMSC, Voicemail, USSD, IVR, CTS service.
There are few public Wi-Fi hotspots in Jamestown, which are also operated by Sure South Atlantic Ltd.[38] As of 2023, the island is connected by the Google Equiano submarine cable, with a lit bandwidth of 100 Gbit to Portugal, and 10 Gbit/s of internet capacity.
[39] Diane Selkirk of The Independent wrote that "internet is slow and costly enough that only the most dedicated teenager keeps up on celebrity gossip.
Latency reduced from 657ms to 131ms after the activation of the cable, as well as providing bandwidth capacity orders of magnitude higher than before.
Specifically they lobbied for branch of the planned South Atlantic Express (SAEx) submarine cable to land on St Helena.
[45] In July 2019, the St Helena Government obtained funding from the European Development Fund and issued a letter of intent to Google to connect St Helena through a 1140 km long branch from the company's Equiano submarine cable.
As of 2023, OneWeb is currently constructing a satellite earth station at Deadwood Plain, to support operations over the South Atlantic Ocean using capacity from the newly inaugurated submarine cable.
[49] Since 2012 Ascension has a cellular network based on the GSM standard which covers Georgetown, Wideawake Airfield, Travellers Hill and Two Boats Village.