Elon Musk responds after a major Starlink outage leaves tens of thousands without internet.
The world's richest man has been having quite the week with his space-based internet service.
After six months of testing, T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert announced that their 'T-Satellite' service is officially out of beta and available to iOS and Android customers.
Nearly two million people have already used T-Mobile's satellite texting service for everything from texting on remote hiking trails to communicating during emergencies when cell towers are unavailable.
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However, just one day after Starlink helped launch T-Mobile's revolutionary satellite texting feature, the entire network crashed in one of its biggest outages ever.
Tens of thousands of users across multiple continents found themselves completely cut off from the internet when Starlink's satellite network went down.
The problems began around 3pm EDT (7pm GMT) on Thursday, when users in the US and Europe started reporting 'total internet blackouts.' According to Downdetector, a website that tracks service outages, as many as 61,000 people reported problems with their Starlink connection.
Reports flooded as far apart as Colorado, Germany, and Zimbabwe, all experiencing the same connectivity issues.
Starlink blamed the widespread outage on an 'internal software failure' and apologised publicly on X.
“The network issue has been resolved, and Starlink service has been restored,” the company’s official X account wrote around 8.15 pm ET Thursday. “We understand how important connectivity is and apologize for the disruption.”
Musk, who owns Starlink through his SpaceX company, reposted the message, and added: “SpaceX will remedy root cause to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
A customer on X pointed out: “the only downfall to Starlink is when it goes down, your only alternative is your phone network”.
Michael Nicolls, Starlink vice-president of Starlink Engineering, wrote that Starlink was back up and running around 8:15pm ET.
However, many users continued reporting problems hours after the supposed fix.
People in California, Arizona, and other areas continued to experience connectivity issues well into the evening.
Just hours ago, users were still reporting ongoing connectivity problems, with some experiencing 'intermittent internet' and others having no service at all.
"It has NOT been restored. It is not working," a frustrated X user replied.
According to the provider, the service supports more than 600 different smartphone models, including iPhones and Android devices.
By linking up to over 650 low-Earth orbit satellites, the service promises global coverage in 130 countries 'far beyond the reach of traditional networks.'