Nigeria, June 2 -- Starlink - the satellite service owned by Elon Musk's aerospace company SpaceX - is at the centre of a licensing impasse in South Africa. But while this is a critical legal dispute peppered with politics, an important question is whether South Africa really needs the technology that such low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites bring.

LEOs operate closer to the Earth's surface than other satellites and can link multiple satellites to offer more speed, greater quality of imaging and less latency.

So, as a LEO satellite system, is Starlink instrumental to South Africa's ambitious SA Connect programme that seeks to achieve 100 per cent broadband access by 2030? Broadband and satellite connections are not mutually exclusive - int...