SpaceX has asked Icasa to resolve the black ownership rules blocking Starlink’s licensing, raising the issue at hearings ostensibly about satellite spectrum fees.

Ryan Goodnight, senior director for market access and development at SpaceX, appeared before the the communications regulator on Wednesday to comment on draft amendments to the Radio Frequency Spectrum Regulations, 2015 and the linked Radio Frequency Spectrum Fees Regulations, 2010, gazetted on 15 May.

The hybrid hearings, which conclude on Thursday, form part of a consultation that would create a registration regime for satellite space segment operators, blanket licensing for satellite terminal networks and separate spectrum fee formulas for gateway earth stations and user-terminal networks. The draft also revises the reference table so that satellite terminal networks, including VSAT and ESIM terminals, are named for the first time.

Goodnight told the panel that SpaceX, founded in 2002, has completed more than 680 successful missions and now serves over 12 million Starlink customers, experience he said gave the company a clear view of which regulatory approaches work. He described the consultation as “a very, very welcome improvement” on the existing regime and commended Icasa for drawing on international best practice.

Among other things, SpaceX wants a new gateway earth station fee charged per licence rather than per station, so that a single licence can cover multiple gateways across the country.

Clarity

It also urged the regulator to widen the Ku-band spectrum available to earth stations in motion, the terminals fitted to aircraft and ships, and to confirm that a single blanket licence can cover an entire fleet of terminals regardless of model or use case. It sought clarity, too, that the terminal network fee under the amended regulation 9 reference table applies to local rather than foreign terminals roaming into the country.

On duration, SpaceX called for a minimum 10-year licence term with clear renewal rules, arguing that long licences weigh heavily in operators’ decisions on where to site infrastructure.

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The most pointed request came last: SpaceX asked Icasa to address how the broader licensing and ownership regime intersects with the fee rules, noting that the spectrum regulations impose a minimum 30% equity stake for historically disadvantaged groups but say nothing about how that applies to the new gateway and user-terminal licence categories.

The barrier keeping Starlink out of South Africa, though, is statutory rather than regulatory. The Electronic Communications Act requires holders of individual licences to be at least 30% owned by historically disadvantaged groups, and SpaceX will not cede local equity. Communications minister Solly Malatsi gazetted a final policy direction on 12 December 2025 pushing Icasa to recognise equity equivalent investment programmes as an alternative, a mechanism SpaceX has lobbied for since 2024.

On 13 May, Icasa said it could not give full effect to that direction without an amendment to the ECA, a day after Malatsi told parliament in his budget vote speech that government would pursue the legislative change.

SpaceX has yet to lodge a formal licence application.

Icasa pushes back

Riaan van der Colff, the authority’s senior manager for spectrum licensing, questioned whether a purely bandwidth-based fee would encourage efficient use of scarce spectrum, and asked SpaceX to point to administrations where a flat-fee approach had proved more successful. He was more sympathetic on terminals, agreeing that the regulator did not want licensing to be burdensome and that minor hardware changes should not trigger fresh licence applications.

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A workable fee and licensing regime would apply to every operator eyeing the South African market, not only Starlink. Satellite broadband is increasingly seen as the quickest way to connect rural and remote areas that fibre and mobile networks have not reached, and Starlink has continued to add African markets while South Africa remains closed to it.

Written submissions on the Electronic Communications Amendment Bill close at 4pm on Friday, two days after the Icasa hearings end. As introduced, the bill covers spectrum, roaming, wholesale pricing and competition. It says nothing about ownership or equity equivalence. — © 2026 NewsCentral Media