South Africa becomes only Southern African country without Starlink launch date

Starlink has announced a time frame for the satellite service to be activated in Lesotho, making South Africa the only country in Southern Africa without an estimated launch date.

This is according to Starlink’s availability map, which says the service will likely launch in Lesotho during the third quarter of 2024.

Of the 54 countries in Africa, only 15 do not have an estimated Starlink availability timeframe.

The uncapped low-earth orbit satellite Internet service has already launched in two of South Africa’s six neighbours — Eswatini and Mozambique.

Namibia is set to receive coverage sometime in 2024, and Zimbabwe and Botswana will be getting theirs at around the same time as Lesotho.

This leaves South Africa surrounded by countries that should have Starlink by year-end.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has not said why it is reluctant to launch Starlink in South Africa, although it has suggested that regulatory issues could be a stumbling block.

Starlink enterprise sales director Phillip van Essen previously told Mining Weekly that the company prioritised those areas that made business and approval easy.

If the company has stuck with this strategy, other Southern African countries have evidently been making approval easier than South Africa.

To obtain network and operating licences, Starlink must either establish a local entity that is 30% owned by historically disadvantaged groups or partner with one.

However, there is also uncertainty hanging over South Africa’s telecommunications industry that these requirements could become much stricter at a moment’s notice.

Icasa promulgated regulations in 2021 stipulating that national network operators must be 30% black-owned.

These requirements are suspended until a later commencement date, which Icasa has yet to announce.

It is believed that this regulatory uncertainty, and the ownership requirements themselves, have caused Starlink to deprioritise South Africa’s launch.

It is also possible Starlink has been more motivated to launch elsewhere in Africa.

However, the latter does not ring true, considering there is clearly a large market for the service in South Africa.

Several thousand users already use Starlink’s roaming service despite the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) declaring it illegal.

South Africans who want to use the technology need to register in other countries and pay additional roaming fees to use it at home.

The cheapest roaming price in Africa is Nigeria’s, which currently costs R578 per month.

This amount may have declined over the past few weeks as Starlink nearly doubled roaming prices to prevent this.

Below is a table showing Starlink’s rollouts and planned rollouts for Southern African countries.

Starlink in Africa

Sierra Leone recently became the ninth African country to roll out Starlink access.

The other eight nations are Nigeria, Zambia, Eswatini, Rwanda, Malawi, Kenya, Benin, and Mozambique.

The table below compares the prices of Starlink’s residential equipment, shipping fees in the eight African countries where it is officially available, and the monthly fee with regional roaming.

It is in ascending order according to the monthly fee with regional roaming.