Starlink tested in the bushveld — 187Mbps when load-shedding kills mobile

South African households whose primary mobile broadband connection goes down during load-shedding or campers who want fast Internet in the bushveld might find investing in a Starlink kit worthwhile.

In the past few weeks, IT Lec, Quick Connect Wireless, and representatives from Cool Ideas have shared their experiences testing SpaceX’s Starlink service in South Africa with MyBroadband.

This included measuring speeds over 100Mbps across rural parts of the Northern Cape, particularly the Kgaladi and Tankwa Karoo national parks.

Although not yet officially supported in South Africa, Starlink’s roaming service allows subscribers in the country to use it if they can import a kit via an officially-supported country.

MyBroadband recently had the opportunity to test a Starlink kit provided by IT LEC in the Sun City-adjacent Pilanesberg Game Reserve in the North West.

For our trip, we stayed in one of the safari tents next to the regular camping sites for caravans at Manyane Resort.

The resort is only a few kilometres away from the Mogwase settlement and, as a result, actually has fairly solid cellular reception and mobile data coverage from several network operators.

The best-performing tower we could use was Vodacom’s, which had three or four signal bars compared to one or two on an MTN-operated Cell C tower.

On Vodacom, we measured a download speed of 67.47Mbps, upload of 6.81Mbps, and 30ms ping on a test using a Samsung Galaxy A54.

Our Galaxy S22 with Cell C SIM roaming on Vodacom achieved a download speed of 47.8Mbps, upload of 4.09Mbps, and ping of 40ms.

An FNB Connect SIM that roams on Cell C delivered a download speed of 21.94Mbps, upload speed of 2.36Mbps, and 26ms ping.

Unfortunately, we did not have an MTN SIM on hand during the visit, although the operators’ website showed its coverage in the area was similar to Vodacom’s.

However, we experienced several hours without cellular connectivity due to the nearby Vodacom and Cell C towers being offline during and after load-shedding.

We pulled out the Starlink kit for a test run during one of these periods.

To transport the Starlink kit on our trip, we used the Starlink123 Hard Travel Case, which made it easy to pack up and carry the antenna, steel mount, Wi-Fi router, and connectivity and power cables.

With a price tag of $657.82 (R11,966) when importing through Amazon.com, we were glad IT Lec also provided us with this piece of kit.

For the Starlink dish to perform optimally, it needs a wide field of view of clear skies to connect to SpaceX’s fleet of low-earth orbit satellites.

Fortunately, our allocated safari tent had plenty of that on offer.

We placed the dish on the ground just a few metres away from our tent and parking spot and ran its cable to the router inside our tent.

This we placed on a wooden cupboard and plugged into a three-prong plug for power.

While having an electrical connection is useful, the Starlink system’s reasonably low power consumption of 50–75W means a portable power station could drive it for those who won’t have electricity at their campsite.

Once powered up, the Starlink dish began establishing a connection to its network.

After 5–10 minutes, it re-oriented itself, and we were ready to hop online.

We connected to the Wi-Fi router with a Samsung Galaxy S22 and ran speed tests via the Starlink app’s in-app testing platform.

Out of seven tests, we recorded an average download speed of 127Mbps, upload speed of 19Mbps, and ping of 179ms.

The average was dragged down by a test that seemed to be conducted during a network blip — measuring 18Mbps download, 7Mbps upload, and 350ms latency.

Aside from this result, all the other tests recorded download speeds over 100Mbps and latency below 200ms, as shown in the table below.

 

The speeds we recorded were more than sufficient for data-intensive applications like streaming high-quality video or downloading large files.

Although the latency was quite high compared to a fibre or mobile connection, it was substantially better than rival satellite services — which offer no less than 600ms.

Latency-sensitive applications like video calling would be possible with a slight delay. Competitive online multiplayer gaming may not perform well at this time, though.

It is important to note that the Starlink dish requires 12 hours in the same location for proper calibration, so the performance would likely improve if we had more time.

Testing in Centurion has shown that the connection gradually gets faster if left in one area over several days.

Below are more photos of our Starlink setup while staying in a safari tent at the Manyane Resort in Pilanesberg Game Reserve.

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Now read: Starlink’s arrival in South Africa is just the beginning of satellite Internet boom