The government went shopping in Dubai, and came back with an inferior alternative to Starlink.
All empowerment protocols observed, the deputy president, Paul Mashatile, declared himself to be “very proud” to help launch BrainSAT Satellite Services and Thuraya satellite phones at a function on Tuesday.
“Tonight, we are not just introducing technology, we are witnessing the writing of a new chapter in South Africa’s digital journey,” he said grandly.
Except that it isn’t a “new chapter” at all.
Satphones have been in South Africa for decades, and the service that BrainSAT sells has been sold by other telecoms operators for years. There’s nothing new here. They’re not “introducing” anything. And what they did announce is outdated.
Few people know about these existing services, because they’re a terrible alternative to virtually anything else. They’re only used by desperate people in remote areas who can afford to pay through the nose for slow internet.
Working visit
The launch of a South African arm of BrainSAT, a satellite internet provider, and the associated Thuraya satphone handsets, is the fruit of a “working visit” of a phalanx of senior office bearers of the government to the United Arab Emirates in 2024.
On this visit, Mashatile was accompanied by the then deputy minister of international relations and cooperation, Candith Mashego-Dlamini, the then minister of justice and constitutional development, Ronald Lamola, and the then deputy minister of communications and digital technologies, Mondli Gungubele.
I’ll bet these larneys didn’t fly economy class.
“During the visit,” said Mashatile, “we engaged with telecommunications and digital economy experts, aligning with South Africa’s governmental objectives for enhancing technological and digital infrastructure towards Meaningful Universal Connectivity (MUC).”
That it has an acronym presumably indicates the degree of seriousness with which the government takes Meaningful Universal Connectivity, even though it has for years blocked the most meaningful universal connectivity provider in the world, SpaceX’s Starlink, from offering services to South African customers, because the company isn’t prepared to cede 30% of its equity to a local partner it does not need.
“The MUC initiative,” Mashatile continued, “aims to ensure citizens have access to affordable connectivity anytime, anywhere, with the necessary skills and devices to engage safely in the digital economy.”
Sounds grand. Except that this deal doesn’t do that.
Tuesday’s launch was attended by the communications minister, Solly Malatsi, and that Panyaza Lesufi guy from Gauteng, so it was clearly a whole-of-government show of pride.
Nothing new
Now I don’t mean to diss BrainSAT or Thuraya. I don’t know either of these companies, but for what they are, I’m sure they’re perfectly fine companies (although the AI-generated promo picture on BrainSAT’s webpage does make one wonder).
Whatever they are, they are not “a new chapter in South Africa’s digital journey”.
BrainSAT’s broadband internet service is provided by YahClick, a service of Space42, a UAE-based provider of satellite communications and geospatial intelligence services.
This isn’t anything new, however. YahClick satellite internet packages have been sold by South African companies Vox Telecoms and MorClick for years.
So all the good deputy president was announcing here was just another local reseller of foreign satellite internet and satphone services that were already available through other partners. That’s hardly a “new chapter”.
BrainSAT doesn’t show pricing on its website. Nor does it advertise speeds. It only shows that a range of capped data packages are available, ranging from “Lite” with 10GB, to “Extra Premium” with 100GB.
A visit to the websites of its rival providers sheds more light on the nature of the service, however.
Vox sells a 10Mbps YahClick package subject to a “fair use policy” for R2,033 per month. MorClick sells an uncapped 5Mbps package (about the same as an ADSL line… remember ADSL?) for R599/month. Neither operator sells a package that exceeds 20Mbps.
You’ll notice that these services are super-slow and super-expensive by comparison to, say, fibre. The slowest fibre package from Vox is 25Mbps uncapped, which costs R435. Its 240Mbps package will set you back R1,045, ignoring the initial three-month discount.
Paying twice as much for 4% of the speed sounds, well, quite unlike a “new chapter”.
Faster and cheaper
If you don’t think it’s fair to compare satellite to fibre internet, then let’s compare it to Starlink, the satellite internet service that the government won’t licence in South Africa. (The reason isn’t that it refuses to comply with BEE law, but that the regulations that set forth telecoms licence conditions place additional requirements, above and beyond BEE laws, on any would-be licencees.)
Starlink doesn’t have official pricing in South Africa, for obvious reasons, but comparisons suggest it would charge perhaps R1,000 to R1,500 per month for a 100Mbps connection with unlimited data. More expensive packages could go up to 400Mbps.
So Starlink is much faster and much cheaper.
If that’s not enough to throw shade at the deputy president’s wonderful satellite deal, there’s another huge difference between YahClick and Starlink.
Mile-high latency
Starlink operates thousands of satellites in a network in low-earth orbit. YahClick relies upon two satellites in geostationary orbit over the equator – one pointed south and one pointed north.
In low-earth orbit, satellites zip around at tremendous speeds, and hand off connections to other satellites as they pass. A geostationary satellite is, as the name implies, stationary relative to the ground. You’re always connected to the same satellite.
This might sound like an advantage, but the problem is that geostationary orbits are far, far higher than low-earth orbits. Whereas Starlink satellites orbit at about 480km above the ground, give or take, YahClick’s satellites orbit at an altitude of 35,786km.
That distance means the signal has to travel much further to make the round trip to and from the satellite. As a result, Starlink offers latency (the time it takes for a signal to reach the satellite and return to ground) of about 10 to 20 milliseconds. Latency on the YahClick service sits at around 720ms.
Latency approaching a second is very, very noticeable. Web pages will populate slowly, voice calls will have long delays, and you can forget about video calling or online gaming. You can get an “optimised streaming” package, but only if you’re prepared to pay R3,360 per month.
No competition
Starlink’s service competes on both speed and latency with fibre (though it might come in a little more expensive). YahClick’s service competes with neither fibre nor Starlink, whether on speed, latency or price.
It is a different class of service, and is no better than the satphones and satellite internet services that have been available for use in remote areas for years.
It’s fine if you operate a farm in a remote area. But it’s of no use to the “young boy in a rural village” to “have full access to digital connectivity”, to quote Mashatile, or to the “elderly woman… to now speak with [her children] daily through video calls”.
This service won’t help the people of Mashatile’s colourful imagination. It isn’t a “new chapter” in any way, shape or form. People use YahClick because they have to, not because they want to.
“This collaboration is a clear indication of South Africa’s readiness to embrace the digital future as well as positioning our country as a leader in Africa’s digital marketplace,” gushed Mashatile.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the technical term for that statement is bullshit, Mr Deputy President. It’s a dirty, reprehensible and dishonourable lie.
Starlink, and rival low-earth orbit networks like Amazon Leo and Eutelsat OneWeb, are supposed to make geostationary satellites obsolete for internet access.
As a result, Zambia, Malawi, Nigeria, Kenya, and Rwanda all have high-speed, low-latency satellite internet access (from Starlink) for less than R1,000 per month.
BrainSAT, with its YahClick service and Thuraya satphones, is offering a fraction of the speed, at many times the latency, for several times the price.
Far behind
This doesn’t make South Africa a “leader”. We’re years behind other African countries, let alone advanced economies.
The reason why we’re so far behind is the government’s belief that it can do better deals than the private sector.
The reason why we’re so far behind is intransigence about the policy that anyone who wants to sell something to South Africans must first give away a stake to a government crony.
The reason why we’re so far behind is that people who stand ready to invest in South Africa are hobbled by sclerotic, ineffective, corruption-prone, and expensive black economic empowerment policies made up by licencing authorities that exceed even those written into law.
If South Africa is leading, it is leading from the back.
[Image: A clearly AI-generated image that presumably illustrates a YahClick satellite dish provided by BrainSAT. One hopes they don’t really just perch electronic equipment outside on the roof. What’s going on with the triple-decker laptop in the window is also a mystery. Source: BrainSAT]
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