Ramaphosa in talks with Musk about Starlink satellite service

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s comments that he is doing everything possible to get Elon Musk s satellite service, Starlink,

SA’ to are an indication that the government is working towards fast tracking regulatory approval for the service locally.

The government has come under pressure in recent years to license Musk’s service. The country is seen as being behind the curve in adopting the connectivity underpinned by low Earth orbiting (LEO) satellites.

During a meeting with editors on Friday, Ramaphosa said there was progress in talks with Musk.

“I have had discussions with him and have said, ‘Elon, you [have] become so successful and you’re investing in a variety of countries, I want you to come home and invest here’,” he said, responding to a question on why Starlink has yet to enter the SA market. “He and I are going to have a further discussion.”

With SA being slow to bring in Starlink technology, a number of telecom providers are working to secure deals that will, it is hoped, put them ahead of the competition, particularly in outlying and remote areas where connectivity continues to be a challenge.

Seacom, Avanti and Liquid have recently launched their own LEO services for enterprise clients, in partnership with France’s Eutelsat OneWeb.

MTN has also signed with the French provider and is in talks with others, including AST SpaceMobile, Lynk Global and Starlink. Vodacom and its UK parent are working with Amazon’s competing platform, Project Kuiper.

LEO satellites have grown in favour as a way to plug connectivity gaps, with Starlink being the best-known such service.

It is already operational in neighbouring countries, including Zambia, Eswatini, Malawi and Zimbabwe, the latest African nation to gain access to the highspeed internet service.

Musk, in response to a post by a frustrated SA consumer on X, said Starlink was “waiting for regulatory approval” to begin operating in SA.

One reason for the growth in LEO satellite use is the cost. Transporting equipment into space is cheaper than it was decades ago, in part because space rockets are now reusable, as demonstrated by SpaceX.

In terms of connectivity, the two disadvantages with traditional satellite technology have to do with latency (the time it takes for signals to reach their destination) and limited bandwidth (the amount of data that can travel through a signal). Fibre and mobile are seen as superior forms of access.

Low-altitude satellites improve on this, offering faster speeds, mainly because they are closer to the ground.

By launching many such satellites into the sky, creating a constellation, operators have been able to cover the main challenges associated with the technology.

Thanks to these advances operators predict that some functions of ground base stations and cellphone towers will be taken into the sky.

While individual satellite costs have come down, creating a network in the sky still comes at a heavy cost.

Launching a traditional highaltitude satellite is estimated to cost $500m (about R9bn). To launch a network of low-altitude satellites, such as Starlink or OneWeb, costs about $5bn.