Bad news for people with Starlink in South Africa

Using Starlink’s roaming service as a permanent Internet connection in South Africa has become an increasingly difficult exercise.

According to recent feedback on local Starlink community groups, the kits must be used in their country of registration for at least several hours every two months to be reset for use in a roaming area.

Some Starlink support agents have also told South African roaming users that they will need to access the service in the subscription’s home country for multiple months before roaming is available again in other countries.

The groundbreaking SpaceX-operated satellite service has not officially launched in South Africa, but many locals have been using its roaming subscription with kits bought in other countries.

Many of them have reported the service to be a game-changer for connectivity in rural areas.

In these places, broadband connectivity is generally limited to slow or expensive traditional satellite services and fixed-wireless access, which can have highly varied performance.

However, Starlink’s terms and conditions for roaming have always stated that this subscription is not intended for use in permanent residential setups or in areas where it has not received official regulatory approval.

They state that roaming may only be used for up to 60 days at a time before a customer must connect the kit to the service in their home country or country of registration.

This is to discourage customers in more affluent countries from abusing cheaper roaming plans from elsewhere in the world.

However, SpaceX only started acting against those who had infringed on this rule — including South Africans — more than a year after launching roaming in early 2023.

After a previous empty threat about roaming use violations in May 2024, it again sent warnings of cutoffs for exceeding the 60-day limit in August 2024.

This time around, Starlink meant business, and numerous roaming users in South Africa were cut off within days.

Since then, subscribers who wanted to continue using their roaming service in South Africa would need to access Starlink in their country of registration every two months.

That was not too difficult, considering four of South Africa’s neighbours — Botswana, Eswatini, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe had officially launched the service.

If a customer’s kit was registered in a different country, all they had to do was migrate their account to their nearest or preferred neighbouring country and travel there to reset their service by “phoning home.”

In the past few months, several users reported being able to get their service back online using this method.

One unofficial importer of Starlink kits—IcasaSePush—even offered a dedicated service to collect and transport customers’ kits to the country of registration, reactivate them, and return them.

However, in late October 2024, Starlink halted new sales of its roaming service in Africa.

Besides making it impossible for new roaming customers to take up its packages, Starlink no longer permitted customers to move the home country of their kits.

Customers in South Africa who had subscriptions with registered addresses in far-flung African countries could no longer migrate their accounts to a closer country with official support.

Quick resets not working

In recent days, Starlink also appears to have made the workaround for those lucky enough to have a kit registered in a neighbouring country more difficult.

Several Starlink roaming users in South Africa who attempted to reactivate their service by visiting their country of registration and using their Starlink kit for a while have seen their kits reblocked upon return.

One user who contacted Starlink support shared a conversation with an agent who said he would have to be in his country of registration for several months. Only then would his kit be reset, and he could again access the roaming service when travelling abroad.

The agent also explained the unavailability of Starlink roaming in the region was due to congestion.

“We have no ETA for when the roaming service will become available again,” the agent said.

A source close to the matter told MyBroadband that Starlink would potentially only reopen orders for new roaming subscriptions after establishing a ground station in Southern Africa.

Another user who has had success resetting their kits explained that he had to spend the night in his country of registration — Eswatini — to ensure the kit would stay online upon returning to South Africa.

Several users have also explained that customers should turn their kits off after returning and check their Starlink app to make sure the notification about their service being restricted has been cleared.