The story of a recent bit of oddity in Tokelau.
I guess it's ok to post this, as I received it as part of an email(as did probably 10K other people). Basically, I am a member of DotTK, and they were just explaining the reason for a recent little disturbance in service.... and I have to say, it was a pretty good reason.
The satellite used for all communication, the Intelsat 804, disappeared from the sky mid January because of a technical problem. The satellite 804 could technically not be controlled any longer by Intelsat, the satellite telecommunication provider. Intelsat therefore incurred a loss of more then 70 million US Dollar.
The people of Tokelau are completely dependant on this satellite infrastructure. Since the connection with the Intelsat 804 satellite has been broken, they did not have any way to communicate by phone, fax or Internet. When the satellite was lost, the people of Tokelau did not know what was going on. No one was able to present them with the story! Each and every way of communication was cut off.
As a result the New Zealand radio, which also broadcasts on long-distance short-wave radio, started transmitting an hourly request to the islands of Tokelau, located thousands of miles from Auckland, instructing them to power the special emergency satellite phone, which has its own antenna link to another type of satellite.
After three days of broadcasting the people of Tokelau picked up this signal and turned on the emergency satellite phone. With the help of the Network Operations Center of Intelsat, the regular satellite phone connection could be restored by pointing the large antenna dish towards another satellite of Intelsat.
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Now, if some Australian/NZ film company was to make a movie about this whole thing, I think I would pay good money to see it(as opposed to crap money to see in on video or Pay TV).