While rubbing shoulders with the US business elite ahead of the 79th session of the UN General Debate in September, it was President Cyril Ramaphosa’s closed-door meeting with South Africa-born entrepreneur Elon Musk that set tongues wagging. The question on many people’s lips was whether Starlink, Musk’s satellite high-speed internet service might finally be coming to Mzansi skies?
The company already provides internet services to at least 16 African countries, including neighbouring Zimbabwe, Eswatini and Mozambique. Due to a fast-evolving data landscape, this is a terrain often dubbed The Digital Divide and the setting that will be the determinant of who falls in the bracket of the ‘haves’ or ‘have nots’ in this new global order.
Ramaphosa’s surprise meeting, suggests CEO of World Wide Worx, Arthur Goldstuck, on an SABC interview was precipitated by a tweet on X – another Musk platform – from SA venture capitalist Michael Jordaan who asked Musk to bring his Tesla cars as well as Starlink to our shores. Musk then responded: ‘That’s the plan.’ Dear Reader will recall that Musk’s most prominent tweet to Ramaphosa came in July last year following Julius Malema’s singing of ‘Kill the Boer.’ Musk took to X (formerly Twitter): ‘They are openly pushing for genocide of white people in South Africa.’ He went on to ask why the president wasn’t saying anything?
Despite Starlink’s lauded efficiency, Goldstuck continues, ‘it’s incredibly expensive.’ ‘What it’s really geared towards’ he says, ‘is where there isn’t internet access.’ For remote farms and mines, it would be a boon, however for rural villages ‘it’s not a solution for inclusivity; it’s not going to bring internet access to underserved communities unless they have a retail business model where you can put a receiver in a village, for example, and then resell – at very low cost – access to what then becomes a Wi-Fi Hotspot.’
However, the messaging from government seems to be pushing the hopeful access-to-millions message. Communications and Digital Technology Minister Solly Mahlatsi is already on the ball, with an IOL report stating he’s ‘said that he will issue a policy direction to the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) so Starlink can bypass the Broad-based black economic empowerment (BEE) rule.’
This is the controversial rule that states that international telecommunications companies ‘must be 30% owned by historically disadvantaged groups if they want to operate in South Africa.’
‘This,’ said the Minister, ‘is part of an initiative to significantly expand access to broadband connectivity to poor South Africans and people living in remote parts of the country.’ He further acknowledged the importance of access to broadband for those seeking employment, remote work or to get businesses off the ground.
‘Giving millions of South Africans access to broadband would therefore constitute one of the biggest empowerment programmes the South African government has ever undertaken.’ However, is it all practical or just another PR whitewash? In an interview in the lead-up to May’s general election, Patriotic Alliance leader and now minister of Sports Arts and Culture, Gayton McKenzie, insinuated that established telecommunications companies were gatekeeping the sector and were bent on stonewalling competition from people like Musk.
Said Mckenzie, ‘look at the price of airtime, data … it’s ridiculous. Elon Musk, Starlink, is not coming here, you know why? It’s going to kill their profits.’ By Goldstuck’s estimation government’s role in the equation should be merely to grant regulatory approval. Already, there are companies falling over themselves for said regulation so as to capitalist on the expected windfall.
That Icasa has already declared the use of Starlink’s roaming services which are fully functional in SA as ‘illegal’ has not stopped consumers from accessing the service through outside internet service providers (ISPs). For the sake of this article, which was meant to delve into our core focus namely ‘a project for models of rural communications,’ from a monetary premise things don’t look too promising.
Those who have been accessing Starlink services have been paying around R1,299 since December 2023. Another ISP has reportedly reduced its monthly fees from around R1,499 down to around R880 and R1000. According to another report a Starlink start-up kit will set you back R14,999 and a further R1,999 for the deposit.
These are heady sums in spaces where often entire families subsist on some form of social welfare. In recent years, local wireless internet providers have descended on Colesberg and surrounding towns. Their monthly subscriptions will set you back anywhere between R579 to R999 a month – again, nothing to be sneezed at down here.
In a 2023 study by UK-based price comparison site Cable.co.uk, SA came in at number 149 out of 237 countries, making it the 89th most expensive country wherein to buy a 1GB data bundle out of the ones measured. According to this group, we are also the 20th most expensive out of the 50 Sub-Saharan African countries.
Ramaphosa’s delegation to the aforementioned debate may have been falling all over themselves to get into a photo with the SA-born tech billionaire, but bromances and business are not exactly the same thing. And Musk seems as shrewd a businessman as the billionaire president who didn’t flinch at firing a few employees at his Phala-Phala farm. (No, these ones had nothing to do with the covert stashing of foreign currency). If anything Musk is not the sort to pander to the big men. At the time of writing, the Nigerian Communications Commission was refusing to approve a unilateral subscription price hike by Starlink. Almost overnight the subscription skyrocketed from N38,000 to N75,000 – a 97% increase according to The Guardian. Perhaps best not expect to much special treatment from the guy who doesn’t really seem much of a fan of the land of his birth.