Can he send me the logs (use the BugAndCrashReport.jar in the starmade directory)?
But from the sound of it, this feels like a firewall issue for me. The game establishes a connection in single as well as in multiplayer (in single player that connection is only local and never leaves the computer, but if the firewall forbids java to make any connections, that might be the problem). Check in your firewall settings, if javaw.exe is allowed to do connections, or try to switch off the firewall (but only to test, leaving it off is a bad idea).
I hope, that helps,
- schema