Niue #9: Up and Running, for a Little While

On our second Tuesday in Niue, we were finally going to fix our antenna, using the parts fabricated the day before at the government's marine repair shop. We met the Telecom techs at the tower, turned off the BTS PA and broadcast equipment for safety, and got to work.

About half an hour later, we got a call on the AMPS phone at the tower site. It was BCN asking if we had turned off their FM transmitter. It turns out that there had been a miscommunication about which morning we would be working, so this was an unscheduled outage. We explained that the techs were already up the tower and everyone agreed that the safest move was just to let them finish their work. A couple of hours later, the BTS antenna was fixed and everyone was back on the air.

(James Mataele (upper) and Kone Magatogia (lower) installing the antenna mount on the "Chinese TV tower" at Sekena, about 53 meters up. Photos courtesy of Toki Talagi.)

We spent the next afternoon and morning doing some coverage tests. We were still loosing range because of interference from IUSN's US-stye 900 MHz network, but we could use downlink RSSI to estimate what the uplink coverage would look like were IUSN to stop jamming us. It looked like we would have good outdoor coverage in Alofi and all along Alofi Bay down to Halagigie, about 6.5 km from the tower site. Indoor coverage would probably be good in North Alfoi and marginal in most of the rest of town. We had marginal coverage in the hospital parking lot, but none at the airport. There was room for improvement and solid coverage of the populated areas of Niue will definitely require additional sites. That was all in line with the Hata suburban propagation model. The rural model did not apply; the bush vegetation was too dense. Still, in a lot of places in and around Alofi, signals were strong enough for the system to work, even with the interference.

(Harvind at Opaahi Reef, 4.5 km from site, "talking to Allison" at a very strong -65 dBm.)

Back at the Telecom building, Tim was trying to connect OpenBTS to the rest of the world, despite the missing Xorcom analog gateway. Using the new Asterisk-Skype interface, he provisioned a few specific handsets to support calls to a few specific international numbers, just to prove it could be done. For about 2 days, a lucky few of us where making international calls from mobile handsets in Niue at about US$0.03 per minute. Ironically, it was easier (and much cheaper) to call the UK and Japan than to call a wired phone in the same room.

During all of this testing, IUSN's WISP was still just as broken as it had been the week before, except now they had someone to blame. On Wednesday morning, IUSN forwarded me a sample complaint:

"Morning all,

To my surprise my internet is working this morning at 5:30am. I've had no internet connection since Thursday last week. Thanks to the GSM mobile people whom are here on the island doing testing and in the process ...... blocking internet to all users north of the NDB bank and Telecom NIUE. Apparently they put up a machine at Telecom NIUE with the signal beamed at the Makapu tower using the same frequency as IUSN is using. No notification whatsoever - how rude!! They even deny that their machine is blocking internet for some people.... and yesterday even turn off the radio to parts of NIUE without letting the general public and BCN know. Anyway, I hope this will be sorted out today!!"

The reported days and times of the service outage did not correlate with our activities, but IUSN didn't let ignorance and bad facts get in the way of good finger-pointing. By Wednesday afternoon, I was literally getting stopped in the street by angry old men shaking their fists at me and yelling, "Mr. St. Clair says you cut the internet!! Internet very important for this island!!" Disgruntled IUSN subscribers were showing up at the guesthouse to harass us in person. I suspected that there was an active campaign of blame and defamation going on somewhere. (If you wonder why I have no kind words for IUSN's operators...) My suspicions were confirmed when saw this:

To: All Users

Re: Wifi Interference

IUS-N has learned only recently that technical consultants have been on the island for the past two weeks and have been testing a wireless GSM phone system which may have been interrupting your ability to connect with IUS-N's WiFi services over the past few days, in particular, in the Alofi North area. We have learned they will continue to do those tests, sporadically, with no warning, today and possibly in the future.

IUS-N is not able to control the timing of the consultants' tests, nor are the consultants informing IUS-N of the dates or times of these tests.

This email is our warning to users that you likely can expect more unannounced WiFi interference in the Alofi North area today, and possibly in the future, without warning.

This interference may cause connection problems from your location.

If you do experience any problems connecting, or you have in the past few days, please email support@niue.nu with detailed information, to help us keep track of these events.

Regards,

Richard StClair

Technical Manager, IUSN

Around 14:00 Wednesday, to satisfy public complaints, the Director of Telecommunications asked that we shut down all of our equipment. By 14:20 everything was powered off. Around 18:00, internet service was restored in Alofi. So what happened in those three and a half hours? We didn't know. I was still confident that we were not the cause of this week-long internet outage, but open minded enough to want a serious investigation. The problem is that the afternoon's sequence of events didn't provide any solid information about anything.

(While all of this was going on, a cruise ship anchored in Alofi Bay and tended 100 or so German tourists into town. In my best broken German, I greeted them "Guten Tag! Willkommen bei schönes Niue. And you should really be wearing a hat in this sun." Surreal for all involved.)