Namibia declined licence applications from Elon Musk’s satellite internet provider Starlink for failing to satisfy ownership and compliance criteria, the country’s telecommunications regulator said this Wednesday.<\/p>\n
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A notice \u200cin the Southern African country’s government gazette on Monday showed Starlink’s applications for a telecommunications service licence and access to radio spectrum had been turned down.<\/p>\n
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The Communications Regulatory Authority of Namibia said in a statement that Starlink had met only three of \u2060the six criteria required by law.<\/p>\n
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SpaceX, parent company of Starlink, did not immediately respond to a Reuters<\/em> request for comment.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The regulator said Starlink did not comply with ownership requirements as it is wholly foreign-owned and had not obtained an exemption from the statutory obligation for a minimum of 51% Namibian ownership.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For national defence and public security reasons, the regulator said Starlink’s business model with 100% foreign ownership \u200craised \u2060material regulatory considerations concerning jurisdiction and enforceability of compliance obligations.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Starlink had previously contravened the country’s Communications Act and failed to respond to a summons from the regulator, showing “a total disregard for the governance framework of the \u2060sector,” it added.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Starlink’s applications did meet competition, technical and financial capacity, and frequency availability criteria, the regulator said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Starlink operates in several African countries but has \u2060faced regulatory challenges in others and resistance from state telecoms monopolies.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In November 2024, the Namibian regulator imposed a “cease-and-desist order” on Starlink, \u2060saying it had been operating without a licence. SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment at the time.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n –Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":29934,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-29933","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Namibia declined licence applications from Elon Musk's satellite internet provider Starlink","published_date":"2026-03-25 18:57:43","news_description":"Namibia declined licence applications from Elon Musk's satellite internet provider Starlink","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/29933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/29933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29935,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/29933\/revisions\/29935"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=29933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}