Starlink Shuts down 5000 roaming clients, Harare forced to buy from resellers

Starlink started shutting its customers in Zimbabwe who are on the Roam Service. These are subscribers who were using Starlink kits registered in Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Eswatini before Starlink got its license in Zimbabwe.

Once Starlink got its license, it gave these customers a 60-day grace period to transfer their kits to Zimbabwean addresses. That or the kit has to return and connect from its registered address outside the country in order to get another 60 days.

There have been suggestions these Roam subscribers were as many as 5,000. So this affects a good number of people. Some were able to transfer their accounts to Zimbabwe, but some could not because of payment problems and capacity issues in Harare.The  Harare capacity problem is quite significant now – there’s just no more capacity, indefinitely. Those subscribers are stuck wait for capacity to open up before they can transfer. But there’s another option.

Transfer of Roam kits to Harare via TelOne, Aura

Affected subscribers can upgrade their account to a more expensive Starlink Business package. And strangely, customers can’t do this directly with Starlink via its website.

It can only be done via resellers, and they’re charging significantly more for subscriptions than Starlink is. And one of them is charging a ‘transfer fee’ of $150.