From Satellite Struggles to Starlink: Tuvalu’s Internet Revolution
Tuvalu is a Polynesian microstate of about 10,000 people spread across nine coral atolls. Until recently, its internet infrastructure consisted solely of satellite links – there were no subsea fiber cables, and even regional microwave links to neighbors were absent due to the vast ocean distances. All international and inter-island data traveled via satellite, terminating at earth stations in Funafuti and smaller VSAT terminals on outer islands en.wikipedia.org prepaid-data-sim-card.fandom.com. This satellite dependency made Tuvalu’s internet expensive, bandwidth-constrained, and prone to outages.