Bad news for new Starlink users in South Africa

SpaceX’s Starlink Internet service has halted sales of its roaming plans in all African countries, making it more difficult and expensive for all future and certain existing South African customers to use the service.

South African Starlink user communities on Facebook groups first noticed the company had removed African countries from its roaming subscription options on Friday, 25 October 2024.

“I’m not sure if this is a glitch on my side, but when I go onto the Starlink website and try to order the roam package, there aren’t any African countries listed in the dropdown,” one user said.

According to an unofficial Starlink kit importer in South Africa, IcasaSePush, this had previously happened for a few hours after an update, so it hoped this was just a temporary bug.

However, more than a week later, roaming subscriptions continued to be unavailable in Africa.

IcasaSePush said the change does not appear to be impacting existing roaming users — including several thousand customers in South Africa — but it has brought the company’s imports to a standstill.

As of Friday, 1 November 2024, IcasaSePush had no more stock of Starlink Gen 2 units and just two Starlink Gen 3 units available.

One possible reason for the roaming crackdown in Africa is that users in countries without official support are saturating logistics capacity and stock in areas where Starlink demand is already high.

Starlink has recorded substantial demand in several African countries from where South African roaming users bought their kits.

The service is currently marked as “Sold Out” for new residential customers in large cities, including Harare in Zimbabwe, Lusaka in Zambia, Nairobi in Kenya, and Lagos in Nigeria.

Customers in these locations have reported download speeds averaging in the low double-digit Mbps, far below Starlink’s advertised speeds.

According to Stellar Systems, an authorised Starlink retailer in Zambia, the “misuse” of the roam plans by user in unofficially supported countries may lead to the permanent shutdown of the roaming feature.

“We can only hope this is not the case and will update you as soon as we get some feedback from Starlink regarding this,” the company said.

YouTube channel Starlink Hardware also suspects the company has suspended new roaming activations to prevent people from using its service.

“They’ve kind of gotten into trouble over it with some governments. They have tried to increase some prices and done some other things to prevent the workaround. This could just be their final step,” he said.

Strictly speaking, it is still against Starlink’s Terms of Service to use its roaming packages in areas where it has not received official approval — including South Africa.

However, at the time of publication, existing Starlink roaming users in the country could still use the service.

It remains to be seen whether Starlink also plans to cut off these customers’ connections.

The company has yet to comment on the apparent roaming shutdown in Africa.

Latest step in a long crackdown

Starlink had already made it substantially more expensive and difficult for South Africans to use its roaming service, which it first launched in early 2023.

In May 2024, it announced significant price hikes for regional roaming, with some countries’ fees increasing to more than double the previous price.

Not long thereafter, it started limiting the number of days the service could be used continuously without a customer using it from the country of registration.

Customers with Starlink roaming subscriptions must use it from their registered country at least once every two months, or their access will be suspended.

This would not prove too difficult for those who already had their kits registered in their nearest neighbouring country.

Starlink has officially launched in four of South Africa’s six neighbours — Botswana, Eswatini, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe.

Therefore, those who bought a kit from one of those countries could use their roaming plans to access the service and simply travel back to reactivate their service every 60 days.

However, the shutdown of new roaming plans in African countries creates a new barrier for South Africans with kits and subscriptions from one of the earlier far-flung countries that first got Starlink support.

These include countries such as Malawi or Zambia.

Customers with packages in those countries who have not migrated their plan to their preferred neighbouring country before Starlink removed roaming from African countries will not have the option to transfer their accounts to a closer country.

That means they will have to travel thousands of kilometres every two months to keep their service active.

While there have been some positive political developments around Starlink’s potential regulatory approval in South Africa, the service still shows an “unknown” launch date for the country on its official coverage map.