There is a growing infatuation with Starlink in South Africa. As regulatory hurdles ease, the satellite-based broadband service is increasingly viewed as a silver bullet for the country’s connectivity challenges. Yet behind the shiny promise of global tech salvation lies a harsh truth: South Africa continues to marginalise its own innovation ecosystem in favour of foreign dependency.
This country does not lack talent, ideas, or funded technology pilots. Government agencies such as the Technology Innovation Agency (TIA) have invested in local broadband technologies like the HomePoynt Wi-Fi access platform, developed by FibrePoynt, a South African broadband infrastructure manufacturer. HomePoynt was publicly funded to serve as a low-cost, high-impact infrastructure for deployment in underserved areas. And yet, the same government has failed to create procurement pathways to sustain such innovations.
Procurement Barriers Undermine Local Capability
While Huawei continues to dominate the SA Connect programme with scale-driven pricing, and even hosting some of their events, public procurement frameworks fail to support SMEs like FibrePoynt. Tender processes remain locked in coded specifications or are subtly structured to favour incumbents, effectively disqualifying locally developed platforms on paper.
Despite localisation declarations, the reality is that South African SME manufacturers are increasingly excluded, not due to lack of capability, but due to lack of access. Supporting local technology doesn’t end with R&D funding; it must extend to structured procurement integration, ensuring that investment in innovation translates into scalable deployment. The economic multiplier is significant: local production stimulates downstream job creation in manufacturing, logistics, and technical support, amplifying the social return on public infrastructure spend.
Consequences on the Ground
The consequences of this exclusionary approach are already evident on the ground.
Many SA Connect deployments suffer from weak signal coverage, inactive Wi-Fi hotspots, and unsustainable rollout models. A rigid lowest-cost pricing regime has forced many SMEs to cut costs just to win tenders, often sacrificing network quality and long-term viability in the process.
Service providers are frequently assigned too few sites to reach economies of scale, resulting in underutilised infrastructure and operations that are financially unsustainable. In many cases, this is not due to a lack of capacity, but rather an inequitable allocation of work, where qualified SMEs are overlooked despite demonstrated merit.
Compounding the challenge, government subsidies were not accompanied by marketing or user awareness budgets, making it difficult for ISPs to drive adoption and generate sufficient usage to break even. As a result, the very providers tasked with delivering last-mile connectivity are left financially exposed, undermining the sustainability of the programme itself.
HomePoynt: Built for South African Conditions
Fibrepoynt designs and builds wireless access points tailored for affordable, scalable broadband access in underserved areas. Developed with public funding, the HomePoynt Access Point is a cost-effective, solar-ready Wi-Fi solution featuring an optional DC UPS power module ensuring resilience in load-shedding environments. The system incorporates high-gain directional antennas and multiple radios to maximise coverage precision.
Its architecture supports both hotspot and fibre-to-the-home applications, enabling passive beamforming and seamless mesh networking. The system connects directly to mobile devices or in-home routers, thereby removing the need for expensive CPE units. Each unit supports up to 80 users simultaneously, and delivers end-user speeds of 5 to 10 Mbps, covering a Wi-Fi footprint the size of a football field, and is ready for upgrade to Wi-Fi 7. This makes it ideal for high-density township zones, schools, clinics, and municipal Wi-Fi projects where cost, speed of deployment, and scalability matter most.
Proven Successes, Missed Opportunities
FibrePoynt has supported live deployments through ISP partners in Sasolburg, Bergsig, Sterkspruit, and other communities, delivering real-world Wi-Fi coverage to spaza shops, rural schools, clinics, and low-income households. These are not theoretical pilots; they are validated rollouts.
Yet, despite these successes, FibrePoynt has not been integrated into official SA Connect implementation briefings or procurement pathways, reflecting a broader pattern of missed opportunities for local innovation.
Furthermore, public RFQs issued more than six months ago remain unresolved. Although the HomePoynt Ultra was showcased internally to monitoring teams, there was no follow-up engagement or promotion to the ISP panels. This suggests that incumbent foreign technologies continue to gain advantage, limiting the visibility of local innovations to procurement pipelines and SME service providers.
Administrative Hurdles and a Call for Reform
More recently, the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies (DCDT) was reportedly instructed to return unspent SA Connect Phase 2 funds to the National Revenue Fund. As a result, all hotspot installations have been suspended pending Treasury’s rollover decision.
This highlights a deeper systemic misalignments between innovation, localisation policy, and execution.
Let’s be clear: South Africa does not have a shortage of broadband solutions. We have a shortage of the will to support our own.
A Balanced Approach: Integrating Local and Global Technologies
FibrePoynt welcomes global partnerships. Starlink has a legitimate role to play, particularly in remote areas where terrestrial infrastructure is impractical. In fact, within the FibrePoynt architecture, Starlink fits naturally as a backhaul complement to local last-mile infrastructure. The real issue is balance: if localisation is a stated goal, then public procurement must reflect that commitment. Outsourcing national connectivity while local solutions remain underutilised reflects a crisis of vision, not of capability.
A Way Forward: Aligning Innovation and Procurement
Public investment in innovation must be matched by structured onboarding pathways that allow validated local solutions to be integrated into national rollout programmes. Procurement reform should include SME engagement frameworks, performance-based inclusion criteria, and fast-track mechanisms for public-funded IP.
As a concrete next step, we propose that the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies (DCDT) convene a localisation roundtable with SME tech providers, innovation funders, and implementation agencies to align on deployment strategy, scale readiness, and localisation metrics ahead of SA Connect Phase 2.
We must support the technologies we’ve already paid to build!
- Mpho Sefalafala is CEO of FibrePoynt (Pty) Ltd, a Samrand-based broadband infrastructure manufacturer funded by the Technology Innovation Agency (TIA). [email protected]
