A Starlink terminal at the Victoria Falls in Zambia. Image c/o Paratus Group

Communications regulator Icasa said on Friday that it has still not received a formal application from SpaceX for a licence to operate its satellite-based Starlink internet service in South Africa.

This is despite news last week that SpaceX has applied to Zimbabwe’s communications regulator, Potraz, for an operating licence in that country. Starlink is already commercially available in South African neighbours Mozambique and Eswatini.

“Icasa has not received any application as yet,” an Icasa spokeswoman told TechCentral in response to a query on Friday.

Last week, Zimbabwean technology publication TechZim reported that Gift Machengete, director-general of Potraz, had confirmed Starlink’s application for a licence. He was speaking at the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair in Bulawayo.

“We are also a regulator; we need to see how we regulate them. We also have to look at consumer and data protection. But currently we are in the process of looking at their application,” he was reported to have said.

Machengete’s comments followed reports that Starlink had issued e-mails to its customers across the world that services to roaming customers who were accessing it in countries where it hadn’t been approved would have their access cut off from 1 May.

This would affect many South African users who have imported Starlink kit as well as users in places like war-torn Sudan where the service is one of the few ways of accessing the outside world.

Unclear

On Tuesday, however, Bloomberg News reported that Starlink services were still available to some roaming customers in restricted jurisdictions despite the threat of disconnection.

According to the report, humanitarian organisations in Sudan have warned that restricting the service would undermine their work across the country, which has been embroiled in civil war for the past year.

Meanwhile, the SpaceX subsidiary’s plans for official operations in South Africa, one of the largest markets on the continent, remain unclear.

In December, in a notice published in the Government Gazette, Icasa confirmed that it had granted approval for the licensing of three products needed to provide Starlink services to the local market. These “type approval” certificates were awarded to Paratus Group, Magic Space Dust and Data X Lab.

“We have a link to say that Starlink is interested in South Africa, to the extent that they have bothered to get their core equipment type approved,” Dominic Cull, regulatory advisor at the Internet Service Providers’ Association told TechCentral Show at the time. “They wouldn’t do that if they didn’t have an intention of entering the South African market.”