Starsat Africa halting all services

Hanno Labuschagne

Hanno Labuschagne

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Starsat Africa halting all services

An unauthorised Starlink reseller, which at one point claimed to have supplied around 12,000 South African customers with kits for the low-Earth orbit satellite service, is halting all services due to "ongoing market instability".

This notification was sent to customers shortly after Starsat Africa's website and Facebook page were taken down, and its WhatsApp and email support lines became unresponsive.
 
I despise ICASA and what they're are doing just as much as the next person, but it's hard to feel much sympathy when it was pretty clear from the beginning that there is no legal legitimate way to get Starlink in South Africa and that all these workarounds were going to come crashing down eventually.
 
Nope, not the right attitude. So a corrupt government makes racist BEE rules and you will just roll over?

Honestly, the only reason we don't have Starlinks in this country is because Elon isn't black. Like wow, that is the defining feature stopping an entire country from not having Starlinks. Black skin. Crazy world
 
StopBeingAStanley said:
Nope, not the right attitude. So a corrupt government makes racist BEE rules and you will just roll over?

Honestly, the only reason we don't have Starlinks in this country is because Elon isn't black. Like wow, that is the defining feature stopping an entire country from not having Starlinks. Black skin. Crazy world
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He must obey the law or face the consequences just like any other African American
 
Good - me and 1000s of other people who work in IT can now breath a sigh of relief and stop having every Tom Dick and Harry proposing Starlink to us as a snake oil cure-all.

When it works and is legitimate, then come back - until then you just wasting my time asking me to install it and then complaining to me for a month that it suddenly does not work.
 
backstreetboy said:
Are they shaking their fists at the sky? I wonder if Musk ever tweeted something that was correct.
https://twitter.com/x/status/1433123220643717120
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This is the irony, it's Starlink that's cutting people off, not the government. Starlink could unilaterally allow people in South Africa to use their service without getting any ICASA approval and there wouldn't be a damn thing the goverment could do about it, and yet it's Starlink themselves who are bending over backwards to discontinue their services where they don't have approval.
 
StopBeingAStanley said:
Nope, not the right attitude. So a corrupt government makes racist BEE rules and you will just roll over?

Honestly, the only reason we don't have Starlinks in this country is because Elon isn't black. Like wow, that is the defining feature stopping an entire country from not having Starlinks. Black skin. Crazy world
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Its two reasons:
1. He's not a cadre
2. He's not willing to let his company bank-roll cadres.
 
mpdjhb said:
Good - me and 1000s of other people who work in IT can now breath a sigh of relief and stop having every Tom Dick and Harry proposing Starlink to us as a snake oil cure-all.

When it works and is legitimate, then come back - until then you just wasting my time asking me to install it and then complaining to me for a month that it suddenly does not work.
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Yeah, people promoting it heavily, often don't understand it.

We have a weekly call with some family in Rural America (they have DSL or Starlink as their only options). The latency is ok, but the packet loss is higher than even DSL. The packet loss also comes in durations of 5-8 seconds every 4-5mins or so (sometimes a satellite switch is problematic, so it drops). Not a problem if you are just browsing or streaming video, but it is disruptive to anything real-time.
 
deweyzeph said:
This is the irony, it's Starlink that's cutting people off, not the government. Starlink could unilaterally allow people in South Africa to use their service without getting any ICASA approval and there wouldn't be a damn thing the goverment could do about it, and yet it's Starlink themselves who are bending over backwards to discontinue their services where they don't have approval.
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The ITU would not agree.
 
So get in, take the money, then exit.
 
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