Musk’s Starlink faces worldwide outage

(MENAFN) Elon Musk’s satellite internet service, Starlink, experienced a widespread outage on Thursday, briefly disrupting global connectivity—including for Ukrainian military forces that rely heavily on the network.

The outage began around 3:13 p.m. ET (7:13 p.m. GMT), according to internet analyst Doug Madory from Kentik, who spoke to Reuters. Musk addressed the issue on his social media platform X, apologizing and promising a quick resolution. “Service will be restored shortly. Sorry for the outage. SpaceX will remedy root cause to ensure it doesn’t happen again,” he posted Thursday evening.

Starlink confirmed the disruption, stating, “Starlink is currently in a network outage and we are actively implementing a solution.”

Ukraine, which uses more than 40,000 Starlink terminals to support its critical infrastructure and military coordination, was notably affected. Robert Brovdi, head of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, reported that the service was down for about two and a half hours but fully restored by early Friday. “Connectivity has been fully reestablished along the entire front line,” he wrote on Telegram.

Musk has had a strained relationship with Ukrainian leadership, often criticizing President Vladimir Zelensky for not holding elections under martial law and suggesting he is unpopular within the country. Nevertheless, Musk has repeatedly committed to keeping Starlink operational for Ukrainian forces, stating earlier this year, “No matter how much I disagree with the Ukraine policy, Starlink will never turn off its terminals.”

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