Thought Leadership
Users of the Starlink satellite internet service reported massive connection problems on Thursday evening shortly before 3 PM EST. At that time, more than 7,000 reports had already been received on the Downdetector outage website. After more than two hours, the network was working again. What was the cause?
Update
Starlink experienced one of its biggest outages ever, leaving thousands of users without internet access. The satellite internet service, which provides connectivity to over six million users in approximately 140 countries and territories, was disrupted for around two and a half hours on Thursday. This was announced by Michael Nicolls, Vice President of Starlink Engineering, in a post on X.
“The outage was due to failure of key internal software services that operate the core network.,” Nicolls explained in his post. Musk also apologized: “Sorry for the outage. SpaceX will remedy root cause to ensure it doesn’t happen again,” wrote the SpaceX CEO.
The outage was unusual for the satellite internet service, which normally has high availability.
Update
Starlink has since confirmed via Platform X that there is currently a network outage: “We are actively implementing a solution. We appreciate your patience, we’ll share an update once this issue is resolved.” Elon Musk also posted a message promising that service would be restored “shortly.” No information was provided regarding the cause of the outage.
Original report:
Reports from affected users complaining about internet outages are also piling up on social media. The exact cause of the disruption is still unclear. Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite network, provides millions of customers worldwide with broadband internet, especially in remote areas.
The company has not yet officially commented on the reported problems. Users should still follow the official Starlink channels for updates.
