Starlink users were plunged into darkness yesterday as a software failure nixed the satellite operator’s core network.
The operator declared the service back to normal after about two and a half hours, but pockets of users still seemed to be struggling this morning.
Users of the Elon Musk owned operator started reporting problems after 9pm last night.
Downdetector showed tens of thousands of reports of outages every 15 minutes, with users checking in from Asia, the US, and Europe.
Just after 9pm UK time, Starlink’s X account confirmed it was “currently in a network outage and we are actively implementing a solution.”
Elon Musk himself weighed in around 9.30pm to say “service will be restored shortly…SpaceX will remedy root cause to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
By 11.23pm, its vp of Starlink engineering at SpaceX, Michael Nichols followed up to say, “Starlink has now mostly recovered from the network outage, which lasted approximately 2.5 hours.”
He explained “The outage was due to failure of key internal software services that operate the core network. We apologize for the temporary disruption in our service; we are deeply committed to providing a highly reliable network, and will fully root cause this issue and ensure it does not occur again.”
However, comments on Downdetector showed customers still struggling this morning, with users complaining of no or limited service.
The service has over 6 million users globally, with over 2 million in the US alone.
Some users use it for critical purposes – including the Ukrainian armed forces, which relies on it for battle field comms. Reuters reported that the commander of Ukraine’s drone forces said the issue highlighted the need for diversification of its comms and connectivity options.
Other users are more prosaic, turning to the service to help them overcome mobile dead zones or the lack of decent broadband.
Still, they too feel the pain, with one European subscriber telling us, “I had to go to bed early as there was no internet to watch TV."
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