Starlink grows next door

Paratus, the African telecommunications group, has opened a Starlink business in Lesotho, offering satellite broadband to enterprises in a country entirely surrounded by South Africa. Yet, Across the border, the same group remains unable to offer Starlink legally.

The Lesotho operation, announced on 5 November, is a joint venture with Real Image Lesotho, led by managing director Makali Lepholisa. It extends a regional roll-out by Paratus that already offers Starlink in Botswana, Eswatini, Mozambique and Zambia. These economies have accommodated a service whose entry into South Africa remains entangled in a dispute over telecommunications licensing and empowerment requirements. 

Lesotho’s mountains make the economics compelling. Extending fibre to a remote customer means paying for construction across difficult terrain, with a limited pool of nearby subscribers to share the cost. But a small national economy can support the service because it buys access to a satellite system serving a global user base.

Paratus is building the local business around the capacity offered by SpaceX, which operates Starlink’s satellites. Paratus supplies the enterprise service, including installation and ongoing support. Its regional expansion combines partnerships with local internet service providers and investment in its own terrestrial network.

“Paratus has not only decided to grow organically, but we have partnered with local ISPs that provide Paratus with local teams on the ground to support our customers,” says Martin Cox, chief commercial officer of Paratus Group.

Paratus’s original Starlink reseller agreement, announced in September 2023, tied expansion to operating licences being awarded to Starlink in the relevant countries. Botswana followed in 2024. By April this year, Paratus was offering its Essential Access package in seven markets, including Lesotho. November’s announcement establishes a dedicated Lesotho operation, extending an existing service presence.

Essential Access offers preferential pricing and priority support to qualifying organisations providing essential services. The company’s education package, EduLINK, launched in July 2025 with 2TB of priority data a month for qualifying schools in seven countries, including Malawi and Eswatini. Equipment was sold separately, with installation and support supplied locally.

Paratus says it connected 18 Family Legacy schools in Lusaka in two weeks, giving more than 10,000 children access to more reliable internet. In a separate project with Right to Care Zambia, it has deployed Starlink across 250 health facilities in three provinces. Those connections support Zambia’s SmartCare electronic health record system, allowing health workers to retrieve patient information and laboratory results. As usage increased, facilities encountered data limits and were moved to the Essential Access plan. 

South Africa has comparable demand in remote areas and a large telecommunications industry capable of installing and supporting satellite services.

Amazon Leo has already secured a route into that market through Herotel, whose evry satellite broadband service is expected to launch in 2027. Vodafone and Vodacom are also working with Amazon to connect remote mobile base stations, extending coverage beyond the reach of existing fibre links. These partnerships put local operators in charge of delivering services using international satellite capacity, exposing how much Starlink’s exclusion depends on its chosen business structure as well as South Africa’s licensing rules.

Avanti Communications already supplies satellite services in South Africa, working with local partners, including Paratus. It added OneWeb low Earth orbit connectivity through Q-KON in 2024, demonstrating that international satellite capacity can reach South African customers through established local providers. Paratus itself participates in that market, even as Starlink remains unavailable through its South African operation.

ICASA’s position is that the Electronic Communications Act requires at least 30% ownership by historically disadvantaged groups for individual licence holders. SpaceX says its operating model requires wholly owned subsidiaries and has sought recognition of equity equivalent investment programmes as an alternative route to meeting empowerment obligations. 

Such programmes allow qualifying multinationals to contribute through approved investment and development commitments. Communications minister Solly Malatsi gazetted a final policy direction in December 2025 seeking recognition of this route in telecommunications licensing. In May this year, ICASA said full implementation would require an amendment to the Act. Malatsi subsequently said the ministry would pursue legislative amendments.

A policy direction has consequently failed to produce the authorisation Starlink needs. In a parliamentary response in June, the department said ICASA had received no Starlink applications for the relevant service, network or spectrum licences, or for their transfer

A local reseller offers installation capacity and a South African commercial presence, but that relationship cannot authorise the underlying Starlink service.

The comparison with smaller neighbours reveals the cost of the impasse. Their markets are generating work for local technicians and putting connections into schools and health facilities, while South Africa debates the conditions under which an additional supplier can compete. The lost opportunity is the additional capacity and competition Starlink could bring, along with the services companies like Paratus could build around it.

In Zambia, the work has progressed to improving how clinics use the connection. Paul Chinyemba, head of IT at Right to Care Zambia, says: “We can now extract better data, manage complex cases more proactively, and respond faster when patients need us most.”

* Arthur Goldstuck is CEO of World Wide Worx, editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za, editor of GadgetWings, and author of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI – The African Edge”.