How Moaning Musk’s Starlink lost South African market to Amazon Leo
Good Morning Cape Town with Lester Kiewit · 20 July 2026 · 4m
Speaker 1: Weekdays six to nine am. Good Morning, Cape Town, only with. Speaker 2: Less to give it one last week, Amazon's Project Caper beating Ilon Mysk Starlink to Speaker 2: the South African market, Amazon partnering with the local telecommunications company heroteal despite having fewer Speaker 2: satellites, no commercial customers just yet in South Africa. And this is while Starlink publicly Speaker 2: challenged South Africa's licensing regulations. What Amazon did? They work within the existing regulatory framework Speaker 2: and they used a licensed local partner to bring its service to market. Joining me Speaker 2: now, Duncan McClard, He's been following the story for tech Central. Good morning, Duncan, really Speaker 2: appreciate it and give us the big picture. How has Amazon managed to get into Speaker 2: South Africa's market before starling and could Starlink have done exactly what Amazon did partnered Speaker 2: with an existing local license holder getting into the South African market well, Elon Musk Speaker 2: repeatedly arguing that South Africa's ownership rules were discriminatory. Speaker 1: Morning Lester, thanks for your time. So yeah, I know it's an interesting development. I Speaker 1: think that Amazon more than anything is not so much engaged with the regulations, but Speaker 1: sideslipped them. They've opted not to hold the license in this market for their own Speaker 1: service Amazon Leo Low Earth Orbit and have decided instead to partner with a company Speaker 1: that's going to hold that license, and that is Hero Hotel, part of the Masive Speaker 1: stable, which of course is now thirty percent owned by Vodacom, also the parent company Speaker 1: of the fiber operator Umtel. So they've decided they're going to come to market through Speaker 1: partners rather…
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