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- South Africans can already access Starlink's internet services despite the fact that the company hasn't received a license to operate in the country.
- Thousands of South Africans are already making use of Starlink, given its global roaming feature.
- One local company, acting as third-party company which imports kits and manages the accounts on behalf of customers, says it's getting 10 to 20 requests a day.
- For more stories, visit the Tech and Trends homepage.
While Starlink is not officially available in South Africa as it doesn’t yet enjoy local regulatory approval, thousands of people are already using the company’s satellite internet connection due to its international roaming feature.
Starlink is a satellite internet provider that is owned by Elon Musk's SpaceX, which provides satellite internet access across the globe through its fleet of satellites that are in low-earth orbit.
For a customer to make use of its internet, they need to have a Starlink kit, which provides an antenna to receive a signal from the satellites, as well as a Starlink Wi-fi router.
Starlink is not officially licensed to operate in SA, but, as MyBroadband first reported, South Africans can use Starlink by taking out a roaming package in a country where it is licensed to operate, then simply making use of the services at home.
One company, Northern Cape-based IT Lec, has started importing and managing Starlink kits on behalf of South Africans.
IT Lec director and investor Mauritz Coetzee told News24 that they have provided access to Starlink to around 1 700 clients so far and receive around 10 to 20 requests for kits per day.
Coetzee said that the company tested importing the kits from many different countries but now gets the majority of them from the US, where the most stock is. This reduces the waiting time.
The company is not a Starlink provider, but acts as a third-party company which imports and manages the accounts on behalf of customers.
Local licensing
The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) is responsible for regulating companies operating in the electronic communication services industry and is responsible for issuing operating licenses to these companies.
In April, ICASA confirmed to TechCentral that it had met twice with SpaceX, but that the company had not yet submitted a request for a license.
News24 reached out to ICASA to understand its current position with respect to licensing Starlink, but the regulator had not responded by the time of this article's publication.
But in other countries on the continent, including Rwanda and Nigeria and Mozambique, SpaceX does operate with a license, and earlier this year, SpaceX launched a new roaming package that allows clients to take their connection anywhere.
This allows for portable use of the Starlink kit, meaning in theory the Starlink kit could be fixed to a vehicle and used in any location. The antenna provided to users with a roaming package is more robust than the standard antenna.
There are regional roaming packages that allow users to use their Starlink kits on the continent as well packages that enable users to access Starlink services across the entire globe.
Speed and spend
Coetzee said that IT Lec charges R15 000 for the hardware, which includes taxes and courier costs, and then charge R1 799 per month after that. Theft of infrastructure and the impact of load shedding on their towers in the Northern Cape prompted the decision to move some of their existing clients over to Starlink, which Coetzee described as a "game changer".
"We have seen that this is the only way to get people on communications again because everything else is going down the drain."
He said that the download speed that South Africans are getting using Starlink is an average of 50 megabits per second (Mbps) and 200 Mbps, although it fluctuates a lot.
He said that the upload speed is more stable at around 15 Mbps to 20 Mbps.
James Coetzee, the co-founder of Quick Connect Wireless, reports similar speeds, and his company has a partner in the UK that is providing Starlink roaming kits to people, some of which are being used in SA.
The benefits of using the service are clear, he says.
"Starlink is a global satellite service and it’s not band based, so basically if you have a ground station, you can connect to the network irrespective of your location and local licensing.
"It’s plug and play so you can basically stop in the middle of nowhere, power up your satellite, point it at the sky and you will have internet," he said.
