Starlink down: Global outage hits thousands, Elon Musk apologizes for service disruption

California: Elon Musk's Starlink satellite internet network, a rapidly expanding global service, experienced one of its most significant and rare international outages on Thursday, July 24, 2025, knocking tens of thousands of users offline across multiple continents. The disruption, which lasted approximately 2.5 hours, prompted apologies from both Starlink and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

The outage began around 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT), with users in the U.S., Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia reporting widespread connectivity issues. According to Downdetector, a crowdsourced outage tracker, as many as 61,000 user reports surfaced in the United States alone, alongside over 10,000 in the UK, indicating a broad "total blackout" for many subscribers. The disruption was particularly concerning for users reliant on Starlink for work and, notably, for Ukrainian military forces who depend on the service for critical communications along the front lines.

Michael Nicolls, Starlink's Vice President of Engineering, confirmed the cause of the widespread interruption, stating on X (formerly Twitter) that the outage was "due to failure of key internal software services that operate the core network." He apologised for the temporary disruption, affirming the company's commitment to reliability and a full root cause analysis to prevent future occurrences.

Elon Musk also took to X to personally apologise for the incident, writing, "Sorry for the outage. SpaceX will remedy the root cause to ensure it doesn't happen again."

The incident marks a rare hiccup for Starlink, a service known for its resilience and rapid growth, which currently boasts over 6 million users across approximately 140 countries and territories. Industry experts like Doug Madory, Director of Internet Analysis at Kentik, described the global interruption as unusual and potentially the "longest outage ever for Starlink" since it became a major service provider.

The timing of the outage also drew scrutiny, occurring just one day after Starlink announced a new partnership with T-Mobile to offer direct-to-cell satellite service, aimed at extending internet connectivity directly to mobile phones in remote areas. It remains unclear whether this new T-Satellite service was affected by or contributed to the outage. As services gradually resumed after about 2.5 hours, Starlink emphasised its active implementation of solutions to stabilise the network.