There are no individual saviors for Tonga’s Internet infrastructure
As other coverage has noted, providing Starlink Internet access to Ukraine is not as straightforward as it seems, and doing so will not end the country's connectivity issues in the middle of a fight for its survival.
Starlink is not the only satellite Internet provider moving into the region.
Geostationary satellites such as Kacific's generally offer a slower Internet connection, compared with the low-altitude orbits used by Starlink, however.
This gateway then beams Internet data from the rest of the world to Starlink satellites, which send the information to small individual dishes, or terminals, on people's properties.
Last month Fiji's communications minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum announced on Twitter that a "SpaceX team is now in Fiji establishing a Starlink Gateway station to reconnect Tonga to the world." But little else seems to be known about SpaceX's efforts.
"We had received information from Starlink a few weeks ago regarding their attempt to provide Internet connectivity to the country via Fiji, but so far there's no development on that. Starlink has been silent since then, and I don't know why," says an engineer at Tonga Cable, who wishes to remain anonymous.
Fiji may not be an ideal location for the gateway serving Tonga because Starlink satellites in lower orbits cannot receive Internet data from a very distant ground station, Speidel explains, only from one within their relatively restricted view.
"Even if we got every household in Tonga a Starlink terminal, we still have to plan for outages," says Ilan Kelman, a researcher at the Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction at University College London.
Of all the satellite options, he thinks Starlink would be best, "If they're willing to help with the costs of expensive satellite capacity and subscription."
Things are off to a generous start-regional news has reported that 50 Starlink satellite terminals have been donated to Tonga, and other news suggests that, for now, Starlink services will be offered for free.