New way people are using Starlink in South Africa

South Africans are increasingly using Starlink roaming plans registered to European addresses to access the fast and uncapped satellite Internet service while roaming on Africa-based plans remains restricted.

That is according to a major unofficial importer and distributor of Starlink products in the country — IcasaSePush.

There are currently many Starlink users in South Africa subscribed to the Roam Unlimited plan with registered addresses in other African countries where the service is available.

These include four of South Africa’s neighbours — Botswana, Eswatini, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe.

However, these customers had already signed up for the service before Starlink suspended the option in Sub-Saharan African countries in November 2024.

According to official Starlink hardware distributors, the change was due to constrained capacity in the region and misuse of the service.

The latter was primarily attributed to people using the roaming option as a permanent solution in countries where Starlink was not yet available — like people are doing in South Africa.

However, Starlink also experienced unprecedented demand in large cities like Harare and Nairobi, also forcing temporary suspensions of new subscriptions in more popular areas

Since then, new Starlink customers who wanted to get a Starlink service in South Africa needed to register their kit on a roaming plan in a country outside Africa.

While Starlink has reopened capped 50GB Priority Data Roaming plans in some African countries, its fully uncapped Roaming Unlimited plan continues to be unavailable to South Africans.

Users who had the service before the roaming suspension are also subject to a maximum 60-day continuous use rule.

Every two months, they must either access Starlink in their country of registration for a day to keep their service online, or they must pause the service and live without Internet connectivity for two days.

IcasaSePush told MyBroadband that it has recently started putting most of its customers on Roam Unlimited plans in Europe, as the Roam Unlimited’s African suspension has remained.

The company said that demand had picked up again after an initial slump following the suspension.

European plans cheaper — with a small catch

In most several European countries, including France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, the Roam Unlimited package costs €72.

At the time of publication, that worked out to less than R1,500 per month. That is more affordable than the prices of Starlink’s regional roaming plans in other African countries.

The once-off price of a Starlink Gen 3 kit and Starlink Mini in these countries is typically also €349 (R7,000) and €299 (R6,000), similar to pricing in African countries.

For its business to be viable, IcasaSePush charges R15,999 for a kit to cover its procurement and shipping costs while still making a profit.

However, it does not charge anything extra monthly as the customer is given full control over their own account.

The downside to using a plan based in Europe is that it is more difficult and expensive to return to one of these countries to reactivate the service after 60 continuous days.

People who cannot go without fast Internet connectivity for two days will need to return to their country of registration with the kit and access Starlink from there.

Alternatively, they could subscribe to the much more expensive Global Roaming plan without a continuous-use rule — but this costs around R8,000 per month.

IcasaSePush has created a useful table on its website summarising the pricing of all the kinds of Starlink subscriptions in supported countries.

Starlink still illegal in South Africa

Recent tests show the service can easily achieve over 200Mbps download speeds and 20Mbps upload speeds in South Africa.

The recent addition of local points-of-presence has also reduced average latency from more than 100ms to under 30ms, making the service competitive with fixed-LTE.

The service is not only better than any other consumer-grade satellite service on the market, it offers far better value per Mbps of speed and has a far less stringent fair usage policy.

That being said, it should be emphasised that South Africa’s telecommunications regulator, Icasa, still considers the resale and use of the Starlink service illegal.

Starlink has not yet applied for any of the licences it needs to offer its services in South Africa, presumably because it would be denied for not meeting the 30% historically disadvantaged ownership quota.

However, the service’s performance has been so impressive for rural users with limited or no other reliable broadband, they are happy to risk the regulator’s punishment.

To date, there have been no confirmed instances of Icasa or law enforcement agencies confiscating or prosecuting people or businesses for using the product in South Africa.

IcasaSePush even advertised the product at the country’s biggest agricultural convention — Nampo — earlier in May 2025.