Namibia’s communications regulator mentioned on Monday it dismissed an attraction by Starlink in opposition to the rejection of its licence purposes, reaffirming that Elon Musk’s satellite tv for pc web supplier failed to fulfill native possession necessities.
The Communications Regulatory Authority of Namibia (Cran) rejected Starlink’s purposes for a telecommunications service licence and radio spectrum entry licence in March, citing non-compliance with possession and management necessities below the nation’s Communications Act.
“Starlink’s utility remained non-compliant with the possession and management necessities below part 46 of the Communications Act,” mentioned Cran an announcement.
The regulator added that Starlink’s reconsideration utility was filed after the statutory deadline, which expired on 23 April.
Cran obtained 624 reconsideration requests from the general public, 622 of which have been dismissed for failing to fulfill procedural and jurisdictional necessities.
The 2 submissions that met the edge launched no new information and recognized no materials error within the unique resolution, the regulator mentioned.
“Cran affirms that the reconsideration of requests didn’t present a adequate authorized or factual foundation to change the unique resolution,” it added.
‘Not black’
In neighbouring South Africa, Starlink’s path to market has stalled on virtually an identical grounds. South African legislation requires telecoms licence holders to be not less than 30% owned by traditionally deprived teams, a threshold SpaceX has repeatedly mentioned it could’t meet, arguing it won’t cede fairness in any native subsidiary. Musk, who was born in Pretoria, has gone additional, claiming he can not get hold of a licence in his dwelling nation “as a result of I’m not black”.
Communications minister Solly Malatsi, a senior DA determine within the authorities of nationwide unity, has tried to engineer a method via. In December he gazetted a last coverage route instructing regulator Icasa to recognise fairness equal funding programmes, or EEIPs, which let multinationals spend money on expertise, enterprise growth or infrastructure as an alternative of promoting shares.
Malatsi insists the reform will not be designed for any single firm, but it surely was extensively learn as clearing a path for Starlink and ignited a political firestorm contained in the coalition, with the ANC, EFF and MK Social gathering all opposing it and the latter two threatening court docket motion.
That route has since hit a wall of its personal. In Might, Icasa instructed the minister it couldn’t give full impact to the route with out an modification to the Digital Communications Act, pushing any decision right into a parliamentary course of that would run for months or years. Malatsi has mentioned the federal government will now pursue these legislative adjustments.
The sensible place stays unchanged. Icasa says it has obtained no formal licence utility from SpaceX, the service is used domestically solely via grey-market imports, and a authorized launch is now extensively seen as unlikely earlier than 2027. On either side of the border, the possession guidelines stay the impediment and the politics present no signal of cooling. — (c) 2026 Reuters, with further reporting (c) 2026 NewsCentral Media
