Starlink prices and speeds put South Africa’s legal satellite services to shame

SpaceX’s Starlink boasts substantially faster speeds, lower latency, and better prices than the legacy satellite broadband services that are legally approved in South Africa.

Although technically not available in South Africa, with only more expensive roaming plans supported locally, Starlink already has several thousand users in the country.

This is primarily thanks to companies like IcasaSePush and StarSat Africa importing Starlink customer dishes and routers from officially supported African countries.

Hundreds of new units are being shipped to the country every month despite the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) deeming the service illegal.

Starlink has been a game-changer for households and small businesses in rural areas who previously had to fork out for an expensive or lower-performance satellite service, or fixed-LTE services that often go down during load-shedding.

One of the major factors that makes Starlink so attractive is its impressive speeds, made possible by its low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite fleet operating around 550km above Earth.

While download and upload speeds can vary greatly depending on the dish’s view of the sky, tests in South Africa generally recorded 100Mbps downloads and around 20Mbps uploads.

In addition, current latency varies from as low as 100ms to around 300ms. This is expected to improve as Starlink brings more ground stations with Internet backhaul online close to South Africa.

In comparison, conventional geostationary (GEO) satellite networks like those run by Eutelsat and Hughes rely on satellites 35,000km away, with much less bandwidth and higher latency.

Entry-level uncapped packages on these networks offered by ISPs like Vox and Morclick start with download speeds of 5Mbps and 10Mbps for R700 and R999 per month, respectively.

In addition to being much slower than Starlink, these packages come with stringent fair usage policies (FUPs) that significantly slow down speeds once a user consumes a certain amount of data in a month.

The table below summarises these and some of the other advantages and disadvantages of Starlink versus conventional satellite services.

Another major benefit of Starlink is that you can use it wherever you travel in Africa if you have a regional roaming subscription — and worldwide if you use global roaming.

GEO satellite services have a fixed installation to ensure they are correctly aligned with their geosynchronous satellites.

The Gen 1 and Gen 2 Starlink dishes can automatically orient themselves to face the right direction for communication with the satellite fleet thanks to a motorised system.

The latest model has a fixed kickstand, but the Starlink app guides users in orienting the dish at the right angle.

This makes the Starlink kit great for adventurers, rescuers working in remote locations, and researchers in the field who want to upload their findings quickly.

These people previously had to pay exorbitant prices for satellite phones and subscriptions.

Complex Starlink pricing

The prices of GEO satellite services are straightforward and explained on the websites of satellite ISPs, including Morclick and Vox.

The subscription is usually only available on a long-term contract, with the customer forced to pay an installation fee that might include travel costs.

The precise cost of the Starlink kit and subscription will vary on a number of factors.

The kit and subscription cost will depend on the account’s country of registration, which can be handled by the user or a third-party importer — like IcasaSePush or StarSat Africa.

These two companies charge fixed rand-based prices for the Starlink kit.

IcasaSePush offers delivery within four to six weeks, while StarSat has a turnaround of four months.

The former’s kit includes installation and subscription setup for R17,998, while the latter charges R14,999 for the kit only.

Starsat Africa previously offered a R1,299 fixed “managed” subscription, but this will no longer be available.

Regardless of whether you import the kit yourself or use either one of the companies, you will deal with Starlink directly when it comes to monthly payments.

Two of the countries with the lowest kit and subscription prices are Rwanda and Zambia.

If you want to have fixed rand-based pricing, then a subscription in Eswatini is the only option,

The table below compares the prices of Starlink’s African regional roaming service with those of approved satellite services from two well-known ISPs.