T-Mobile’s long awaited satellite services — powered by SpaceX’s Starlink network — went live yesterday, with the carrier making fun of “rivals” scrambling to catch up. In an ironic twist of fate, however, the Starlink network suffered a very rare, major outage mere hours after the rollout of T-Mobile’s new claim to fame.
Experts are assuming that this was due to a bad software update, a claim that is backed up by Starlink’s own admission of key software components encountering a failure. Elon Musk also took to his platform — X, formerly Twitter — to promise that this issue would be addressed soon and will not happen again.
Were you affected by the Starlink outage?
Yes, I was
30.65%
Didn't notice it
17.74%
Don't use Starlink
41.13%
I was fast asleep
10.48%
The outage lasted for approximately 2.5 hours, during which tens of thousands of users were affected across the globe. Whatever the cause was seems to have been fixed, and most of the Starlink network is now back online.
In addition to a bad software update, it’s too early to rule out the possibility of a coordinated attack on the network. If that is indeed what happened, then T-Mobile likely just unluckily got caught in the crossfire. Starlink is also in use by U.S. intelligence agencies, which seem like the intended target rather than T-Mobile.
T-Mobile’s partnership with Starlink aims to eliminate dead zones. | Image credit — T-Mobile
The “un-carrier” has been building up to the public release of its satellite-powered services for a long time. There have been beta rollouts prior, and users have generally reviewed the service quite positively.
AT&T and Verizon won’t be behind in this race for too long. Both carriers are partnering with AST SpaceMobile to bring users their own versions of satellite texting services. When the top three networks have rolled out their offerings, there shouldn’t be any place in the U.S. that doesn’t get cell reception.
T-Mobile will be rolling out satellite-powered data plans later this year as well, a few months before its rivals announce their own competing services publicly. The Starlink outage is a very rare occurrence, and honestly not something I expected to ever happen.
But, I suppose it serves as a strong reminder that even the most robust networks aren’t prone to failures. Let’s just hope something similar doesn’t happen when a stranded user needs this service the most.
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Abdullah loves smartphones, Virtual Reality, and audio gear. Though he covers a wide range of news his favorite is always when he gets to talk about the newest VR venture or when Apple sets the industry ablaze with another phenomenal release.
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