Icasa — Starlink to operate in SA must be 30% owned by historically disadvantaged groups

Icasa has confirmed that Starlink, a satellite internet provider owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, has not applied for the necessary licenses to operate in South Africa. Starlink has a fleet of low Earth orbit satellites that provide access to high-speed internet across most of the world, including in rural areas, which have traditionally been difficult to service.

Starlink satellites orbit at around 550 kilometers above the Earth’s surface, which allows for faster internet speeds than has traditionally been the case with satellite internet. This is because Starlink has lower latency than other satellite internet providers. Latency is a measure of the time it takes for data to be transferred between source and destination, and is usually measured in milliseconds. 

Starlink is already operating officially in many countries across the world, including four in Africa, but it has not made a proclamation about when it plans to start operating in South Africa. The Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) did confirm that there have been two meetings between itself and SpaceX, where the company sought guidance on the regulatory requirements and process for acquiring the necessary operating licenses.

However, the communications authority said, Starlink has not yet applied for any of the required licenses to operate as a broadband satellite services provider. The Electronic Communications Act requires electronic communications networks which operate for commercial purposes at a provincial or national scale to obtain operating licenses from Icasa.

The authority said it would issue Starlink an individual electronic communications network service license, an individual electronics communications service license, and the appropriate radio spectrum license, should it apply and meet requirements.

One of the requirements, Icasa said, is that applicants must “have a minimum 30% equity ownership held by persons from historically disadvantaged groups, which includes black people, women, youth, and people with disabilities.”

It is technically possible to access Starlink services from most of the landmass on earth, including the whole of Africa, as the satellite network provides coverage even in areas where Starlink is not licensed to operate.

However, a Starlink kit that includes an antenna and router is required to access the company’s services, and Starlink is only able to deliver these kits and offer services in countries where it has been approved to operate in.

Without the necessary licenses to operate in South Africa, Starlink cannot provide kits and services directly to South Africans. When a South African address is entered into the Starlink website, South Africans are prompted to pay a deposit to reserve a Starlink kit for when regulatory approval is granted.

Despite this, it’s well-known that more than 1 000 South Africans who’ve circumvented the obstacles. It is possible to access Starlink in South Africa using a roaming package that the company launched earlier this year.

The package allows customers to subscribe to a country where Starlink is officially available and to access its services wherever the network is available. This means that a Starlink kit can technically be fixed to a car and its services accessed even in countries where the company has not received regulatory approval.

An internet service provider in the Northern Cape, IT Lec, is acting as a third party that imports and manages Starlink subscriptions on behalf of South Africans.

IT LEC director Mauritz Coetzee said that the company had been able to provide Starlink services to South Africans using the roaming feature. The company orders the kits in another country, imports them to South Africa, and manages the subscription on behalf of South African users.

Coetzee says IT LEC has provided Starlink access to about 1 700 clients so far, and receives around 10 to 20 requests for kits per day. Starlink enterprise sales director Phillip van Essen says the satellite internet provider wants to begin operating in South Africa soon, Mining Weekly reported.

He said:

We prioritise the countries that make it easy for us to do business there, open entities and get regulatory approvals. We respect that every country has its own process and a dedicated team that is focused on regulatory efforts globally, including South Africa. We’re hopeful that we can resolve the issues and start service here soon, as well as in other [African countries].

The benefits of using Starlink are clear, says James Coetzee, the co-founder of Quick Connect Wireless, an internet services company that has also provided Starlink kits to people in South Africa.

“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 have internet,” he says.

Both Mauritz and James reported similar speeds for Starlink users in South Africa, with download speeds said to be averaging between 50 megabits per second (Mbps) and 200Mbps, and upload speeds being more constant at around 15Mbps and 20Mbps.