Airtel Kenya is waiting on the CA to switch on Starlink satellite calling - tech-ish

This story has significance for readers across Kenya and beyond.

Airtel Kenya says it has finished building and testing a service that lets an ordinary smartphone connect to a satellite when there is no mobile signal on the ground. The company says it will launch it as soon as the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) approves.

Managing director Djibril Tobe said this on Monday in Nairobi, at the launch of Bizna Wallet, an Airtel Money product for small businesses. “We have already carried out a very successful pilot which proved that it is working and as soon as we get the approval from the regulator we will be able to offer this product to Kenyans who will now be reachable everywhere in the country,” he told journalists. Tobe took over as Airtel Kenya MD on 1 July.

If the CA says yes, Airtel becomes the first operator in Kenya to sell satellite connectivity that works on a phone you already own.

What Direct-to-Cell is, in plain terms

Starlink Direct-to-Cell puts a small mobile base station on a satellite. That satellite then broadcasts on the same 4G frequencies your phone already uses to talk to a mast on a hill. Your phone doesn’t know the difference. It sees what looks like a very distant tower and connects.

SpaceX says in its own Direct-to-Cell brief that its mobile operator partners supply the LTE spectrum, in the 1.6 to 2.7 GHz range, and that Starlink then plugs into the operator’s network much like a roaming partner would. In Kenya that spectrum is Airtel’s. The satellite is borrowing Airtel’s licence.

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Three things get confused here, so it is worth separating them.

Starlink home internet needs a dish, costs money upfront and gives you a broadband connection at one fixed address. Satellite backhaul uses a satellite link to feed a normal ground mast in a place fibre can’t reach, which is the route Safaricom is taking through its parent companies. We wrote about that when Vodafone signed with Amazon Leo, and again when Amazon applied for its own Kenyan licence. Direct-to-Cell is the third thing. No dish, no mast, no new handset. The phone talks to orbit.

What the pilot actually proved

Airtel Africa and SpaceX ran the Kenya test in March. Their statement of 24 March 2026 says the tests happened in “no connectivity” areas, that 4G-compatible smartphones reached Starlink’s constellation of 650 launched satellites, and that the link carried WhatsApp calling and messaging, maps, Facebook Messenger and transactions on the MyAirtel app. We covered that test at the time.

Chat apps, maps and mobile money is kind of whole list of what this technology will support. Airtel calls this light-data use. Normal phone calls and normal SMS over satellite will come in a later phase, which Airtel ties to Starlink Mobile V2 satellites.

Airtel also hasn’t published performance figures. It ran a second trial in Madagascar on 11 July. Telecoms Tech News noted that Airtel disclosed no speeds, no latency, no satellite capacity and no figure for how many people can share one satellite beam.

Why the CA hasn’t signed off

The regulator’s problem is interference. Airtel’s 4G frequencies are not used only by Airtel, and neighbouring bands carry Safaricom, Telkom and Faiba traffic across the country. A signal coming down from orbit into that same spectrum can raise the noise floor for everyone underneath.

The CA confirmed the review to Business Daily in March. “The Authority and Airtel Networks Kenya Limited have had meetings to discuss the partnership. Airtel has submitted a formal application for consideration by the Authority, which is currently being reviewed,” it said in an emailed response. The practical output of a review like this is a set of conditions: maximum transmit power, which bands, and where the service may operate.

A second licence requirement could also be the reason this hasn’t been cleared. Starlink itself isn’t cleared to run the service. Under the CA’s Revised Telecommunications Market Structure for 2026, satellite operators need an International Gateway Systems and Services licence, priced at KES 15 million for 15 years or KES 45 million for 25, plus an annual fee of 0.4% of gross turnover with a floor of KES 4 million. We explained what changed and who it hits in April. The CA said then that Starlink held landing rights only and would need the IGSS licence for Direct-to-Cell. We have no evidence since that the licence has been issued.

The competitive picture

Airtel had 23.2 million mobile subscriptions at the end of March, against Safaricom’s 57.9 million, according to the CA’s sector statistics for the third quarter of FY2025/26. That is 27.6% of the market against 68.9%. A large part of Safaricom’s premium rests on having signal where nobody else does, and Direct-to-Cell is Airtel renting coverage from orbit instead of building masts for it.

The same CA report counts 50.2 million smartphones connected to Kenyan networks, up 3% in the quarter. That is the pool of devices this could theoretically serve. Compatibility depends on whether a handset supports the specific band Airtel and Starlink use, and Airtel hasn’t published a device list for Kenya.

What to watch

Two things have to happen before any of this reaches a phone. The CA has to approve Airtel’s application with technical conditions, and as it stands, Starlink has to hold the IGSS licence that lets it run the service here. Neither has been announced. Airtel has not published a price or a launch date either.

When it does arrive, treat it as a way to send a message from a place with no bars, not as a replacement for a data bundle. We have already had to warn our readers about fake Starlink bundles on TikTok once.

Reporting originally appeared via Tech-ish Kenya. Read the full source for additional context.