Starlink speeds up as African demand grows

Starlink satellite internet is becoming faster and more reliable across parts of Africa, at the same time as the number of connections growing rapidly. New measurements from enterprise networks show that delays in data transmission have fallen by more than 20%, while the number of active satellite connections has increased by 70% in a year.

The findings come from Johannesburg-based Redvine Networks, a specialist in managing business networks across Africa and Europe. Founded in 2017, it serves more than 100 enterprise clients, with customers and partners including Shoprite, Woolworths and Momentum Metropolitan. Its systems combine satellite, fibre and wireless connections, giving it direct insight into their performance under everyday business conditions.

Its latest research covers Starlink connections across several sub-Saharan African markets in the year to July 2026. While the figures reflect Redvine’s own customer network, they provide a pratical measure of Starlink’s performance as Amazon Leo prepares to challenge its dominance of the African satellite broadband market.

Average latency, the time taken for data to travel across a connection, fell from around 20 milliseconds to a low of less than 15.5ms, before stabilising at around 15.6ms. Packet loss, which measures data that fails to reach its destination, dropped from 0.1% to below 0.06%.

These improvements will be attractive for businesses that depend on cloud services and applications that demand fast responses from their networks.

Traditional satellite internet services, operating from geostationary satellites approximately 36,000 kilometres above Earth, have typically suffered from high latency because of the distances data must travel.

Starlink uses satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO), much closer to the planet, dramatically reducing communication delays. Amazon Leo, previously known as Project Kuiper, uses the same broad approach and is developing a rival satellite constellation.

“The data shows satellite is becoming a serious part of the connectivity mix across the environments we monitor,” says Wesley van Rayne, product and solutions lead at Redvine Networks. “Performance has improved while adoption has grown, but the most useful finding for an enterprise is what happens when satellite connectivity forms part of a wider network architecture. Businesses gain resilience when every available path can be monitored and used intelligently.”

The research also reveals an important difference between the reliability of an individual satellite connection and the availability of the business network using it.

Across the measurement period, Starlink connections achieved average uptime of approximately 94%. However, the sites using these connections maintained availability closer to 98%, thanks to the use of alternative connectivity technologies.

Redvine uses software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) to manage these connections. The technology monitors network performance and directs data through available links according to their condition.

“A satellite connection does not have to perform perfectly every second to add significant value to an enterprise network,” says van Rayne. “The stronger model is one in which the business has several usable paths and the network can respond when the quality of one of them changes. Our telemetry shows the difference that approach can make to overall site availability.”

Businesses using cloud applications experience this difference between uptime and actual performance most directly. A connection can remain operational while congestion or increased latency slows applications. Monitoring the quality of individual links allows a network to redirect traffic before a complete failure occurs.

The research provides an indication of the growing maturity of satellite broadband as the competition between Starlink and Amazon Leo intensifies.

Starlink has already established a substantial presence across Africa, but its commercial entry into South Africa remains delayed by regulatory and licensing requirements. Amazon Leo, meanwhile, has reached an agreement with South African internet service provider Herotel to introduce satellite broadband through a new service called evry, with commercial availability targeted for 2027.

The initial offering will focus on residential customers and small businesses, particularly in rural areas and smaller towns where fibre and fixed wireless infrastructure cannot economically reach every customer.

The partnership gives Amazon an opportunity to establish itself in South Africa ahead of Starlink, despite SpaceX having a considerable advantage in operational satellites and established customers internationally.

Herotel will handle local distribution and services, using its existing infrastructure and customer support operations. That approach also provides a route through South Africa’s telecommunications regulatory system, which has complicated Starlink’s plans.

That said, Starlink’s expansion has demonstrated demand for satellite broadband in locations beyond the economical reach of conventional infrastructure, while Amazon is investing heavily in a competing network.

Van Rayne said the emergence of additional satellite networks would increase the options available to businesses.

“As more satellite networks become available, enterprises will have more choice at the edge,” he says. “The real opportunity is to build an architecture capable of using that choice properly. Our experience across African markets shows that resilience comes from understanding how each link is performing and allowing the network to use the best available path for the application at that point in time.”

• For more information, visit Redvine Networks.