Starlink’s speed in South Africa vs other African countries

Starlink is yet to be rolled out in South Africa, although the nine African countries that do have it could paint a picture of the expected speeds if it eventually launches.

The availability map on Starlink’s website provides ranges for download, upload and latency speeds for each country that has access to the service.

Starlink’s website notes that users can expect download speeds between 25 and 200 Mbps and upload speeds between 5 and 20 Mbps.

An analysis of MyBroadband speed tests performed on the web since the kits first started being imported also gives an idea of what South Africans can expect in terms of speed.

MyBroadband has recorded Starlink download speeds of over 150Mbps on its speed test platform.

This is likely much slower than the service could achieve with a full local launch, as traffic to South African servers is routed via ground stations elsewhere on the continent, like Nigeria.

Using the Starlink app’s built-in speed tests, we’ve often seen download speeds exceeding 100Mbps and upload speeds of around 20Mbps on a kit we tested ourselves.

All African countries have a minimum download speed of at least 50 Mbps and a maximum of at least 125 Mbps.

South African speeds start at a meagre 25 Mbps, but speeds of 155 Mbps have been measured.

The continent’s highest speeds currently are in Benin, with download speeds between 136 and 216 Mbps.

As for upload speeds, most countries fall within the same range of 10 to 25 Mbps.

Upload speeds measured in South Africa are currently far below this, ranging between 3 and 15 Mbps.

“Latency ranges between 25 and 60 ms on land, and 100+ ms in certain remote locations (e.g. Oceans, Islands, Antarctica, Alaska, Northern Canada, etc.),” Starlink says on its website.

Most African countries fall far outside of this latency range.

Rwanda, for example, has a download speed of between 96 and 183 Mbps, an upload speed of between 14 and 29 Mbps, but a latency of between 105 and 135 ms.

This is a higher latency than the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean between the US and Europe, with a latency between 38 and 51 ms.

Zambia’s latency is even worse, ranging from 125 to 158 ms, the highest on the continent.

According to Starlink’s global availability map, only 12 countries have latency above 100ms. Eight of these are in the African region.

This is most likely caused by a lack of ground stations in or near these countries.

The only Starlink ground stations currently live in Africa are located in Nigeria.

To provide some context, the US state of Arizona has a latency range of 26 to 32 ms, download speeds from 101 to 203 Mbps, and upload speeds from 16 to 28.

Spain and most of Europe have similar ranges, as do most of South America.

Benin is the only African country with similar speeds. Nigeria is not far behind.

The table below shows the nine African countries’ download, upload, and latency speeds.

Sierra Leone has only recently had the service activated, so there is not yet data for the country.

South African speed tests

An analysis of MyBroadband speed tests performed on the web since the kits first started being imported provides an idea of what South Africans can expect in terms of speed.

When it comes to Starlink speed tests performed on MyBroadband’s platforms, it is important to note that these might have slower speeds than users actually experience, as our test traffic goes to South African data centres.

Using the Starlink app’s built-in speed tests, we’ve often seen download speeds exceeding 100Mbps and upload speeds of around 20Mbps on a kit we tested ourselves.

But even on MyBroadband’s speed tests, Starlink recorded a solid average download speed of 31.44Mbps and upload speeds of 2.76Mbps.

That was based on 4,077 speed tests conducted by 661 unique users in South Africa since January 2024.

We’ve recorded download speeds as high as 156Mbps, with upload speeds up to 6Mbps.

In addition, without any local ground infrastructure and relying solely on its inter-satellite links, the speed tests showed an average latency of 294ms.

Starlink in South Africa

So far, Sierra Leone, Eswatini, Nigeria, Kenya, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Rwanda, Benin, and Madagascar have all received Starlink access.

South Africans who want to use the technology need to register in other countries and pay additional roaming fees to use it at home.

However, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa has warned that this is illegal. It is also technically a violation of Starlink’s terms of service.

Starlink appears to be addressing concerns over its roaming services being used in countries where it has not yet received approval by hiking the prices of its roaming plans.

Its recently-announced price hikes have pushed the roaming services’ cost to well over double similar fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) and fixed-5G package prices in South Africa, except if users have their registered address in Nigeria.

The new prices are set to kick in from August 2024.

Starlink can be an alternative to fixed-LTE and fixed-5G in locations where cellular networks don’t perform well, and no FTTH is available.

Its roaming prices also competed very well with FTTH and fixed-5G for many months since launching in African countries at various periods in 2023.

For example, a Starlink Roaming user in South Africa with a registered service address in Zambia paid ZMW1,000, about R710 per month.

That price was lower than Afrihost’s 100Mbps FTTH prices on three major fibre operators — Vumatel, Openserve, and Frogfoot.

Following the price hikes, Starlink will no longer be price-competitive with fibre or fixed 5G.