Good news about “illegal” Starlink in South Africa

Starlink’s satellite Internet service has remained online in South Africa for over two months despite warnings that it would cut off people using its roaming service in areas with no official support.

Starlink has been described as a game-changer for those living, working, and frequently travelling in South Africa’s most remote areas.

The service has helped rural schools, farms, fishermen, and wildlife reserves, which previously suffered without reliable and affordable broadband access.

In some instances, conventional satellite Internet connectivity was available. However, it was substantially slower, non-mobile, and more expensive than Starlink when calculated on a per-Mbps basis.

Starlink has not confirmed a local launch date for its main residential service. However, the broadband service’s roaming has been working in South Africa since at least early 2023.

Since Starlink does not yet deliver directly to South Africa, those interested in its roaming packages have two options.

1. They can order the kit themselves, register it, and have it delivered to an address in an officially supported country.
2. Use a third-party importer that could source and deliver the kits on behalf of keen South African users.

Some providers took the risk of reselling the service to their customers, which is against Starlink’s terms of service.

In one case, hundreds of their customers’ kits were disabled. They became expensive paperweights after it failed to heed Starlink’s warnings to transfer its customers to their accounts for several months.

Fortunately, some only offered to import the kit with a once-off additional fee and registered the actual account in the customers’ names.

That avoided Starlink blocking their kits, alleviating fears over blocking.

That lasted until an email warning in mid-April 2023, in which Starlink said that those who were using its roaming service outside of officially-supported areas were also in violation of its terms of service.

That came months after South Africa’s official telecoms regulator — the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) — labelled the service’s local operation and use as “illegal” because Starlink still needed to obtain the necessary telecoms and spectrum licences.

Despite the threat of fines and equipment confiscation, several thousand people continued to use the service because it was vastly superior to their alternatives.

In addition, MyBroadband has not seen a single report of a South African Starlink user being cut off from its roaming service.

Sales expected to bounce back

One company that imports Starlink kits on users’ behalf in South Africa is IcasaSePush.

In recent feedback to MyBroadband, the company said that sales of Starlink kits were “rough” in May 2024 but increased again in June.

The warning letter from Starlink had scared away new customers who feared that they would be cut off at any moment.

IcasaSePush expects sales to return to “normal” levels after 1 July 2024, which will mark two months after the initial cutoff date of 1 May 2024.

Some people speculated that Starlink’s warning letter had implied the cutoffs would only take effect two months after 1 May 2024.

Starlink’s Terms of Service states that a kit must be used in its home country once every two months or roaming will be suspended.

However, it has not implemented this policy since it launched roaming.

The warnings of cutoffs came shortly after reports that Starlink kits were being imported and used by Russian troops in their battles with Ukrainian soldiers.

IcasaSePush believes that Starlink’s close cooperation with the US’s Pentagon to curtail the abuse of its systems anti-Ukrainian forces could possibly be attributed to the company no longer needing to action the cutoffs.

IcasaSePush is also hopeful that the Democratic Alliance’s Solly Malatsi will help accelerate Starlink’s approval in South Africa after being appointed as the country’s new Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies.

There are several regulatory roadblocks to an official Starlink launch in South Africa.

Firstly, the Electronic Communications Act requires telecoms licensees to be 30% owned by historically disadvantaged groups (HDGs).

People qualifying as part of HDGs include the youth, black people, women, and people with disabilities.

Secondly, the department has not issued an Invitation to Apply (ITA) for new electronics communications services licences or electronic communications network services licences in well over a decade.

That leaves Starlink with either having to buy a licence from an existing holder or reselling its service via a licencee.

The licence transfer will require that it meet the HDG requirement, while the reselling option is not aligned with Starlink’s typical direct-to-customer business model.

Lastly, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) has gazetted but not yet implemented a new requirement that will require telecoms licensees be 30% owned by black people, on top of the HDG requirement.

This regulation has been suspended for over three years, leaving Internet service providers uncertain whether they will need to make the necessary restructuring and deals to comply.