While low-earth orbit satellite services are still not officially supported for personal use in South Africa, multiple companies are already selling the next-generation satellite connectivity to corporates and large businesses.
However, the substantial distance limits download bandwidth, typically maxing out at 50Mbps on top-end packages and resulting in high connection latencies of over 600ms.For example, an entry-level uncapped satellite service on Morclick in South Africa features download speeds of just 10Mbps and 3Mbps uploads for R999 per month on a long-term contract, excluding installation.
Starlink’s network offers many residential users download speeds over 100Mbps and upload speeds of around 5Mbps to 20Mbps. While the increased distance between Earth and OneWeb’s satellites results in additional latency, it can cover a larger area with each satellite. A Starlink Business package in Eswatini starts at just R2,185 for 1TB of priority data speeds per month and goes up to R12,650 for 6TB of priority data.
With this capability, Starlink can bypass undersea cable breaks, which have disrupted Internet connectivity in South Africa in recent months.The first LEO service that could become available for personal use in South Africa may be Amazon’s Project Kuiper, which has partnered with Vodacom to provide 4G and 5G connectivity in remote areas.