Starlink, SpaceX's satellite internet service, experienced a major global outage on January 23, 2025, leaving millions of users without internet access across multiple continents. The disruption began around 19:14 UTC and lasted several hours, affecting both residential and business customers who rely on the service for critical communications.
The outage was particularly concerning because user terminals couldn't even connect to satellites, with many devices showing orange warning lights and pointing in unusual directions. This suggested the problem went deeper than typical network routing issues, potentially affecting the satellite constellation's ability to communicate with ground stations.
Outage Timeline and Impact:
- Start Time: Approximately 19:14 UTC on January 23, 2025
- Duration: Several hours of global service disruption
- Affected Regions: Worldwide, including North America, Europe, and other continents
- Symptoms: Orange warning lights on terminals, inability to connect to satellites, unusual dish pointing directions
- Recovery: Gradual restoration with automatic terminal reboots and software updates
Technical Community Points to Multiple Possible Causes
Tech experts in online discussions identified several potential culprits behind the widespread failure. The most commonly suspected cause was a configuration error, possibly related to BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) routing or a failed software update pushed to the satellite network. One community member noted that CloudFlare's monitoring showed a sharp drop in Starlink traffic without corresponding BGP changes, suggesting the problem originated within Starlink's internal systems rather than external internet routing.
The timing raised additional concerns, as the outage coincided with similar disruptions affecting UK mobile networks. Some users reported receiving unexpected IP address change notifications just before losing service, while others noticed their terminals were stuck during software updates.
BGP: A protocol that manages how data packets are routed across the internet between different networks
Speculation About Coordinated Attacks
The simultaneous nature of multiple communication outages led to speculation about potential cyberattacks, particularly given Starlink's strategic importance in ongoing conflicts like the war in Ukraine. Some community members pointed to Russia's previous success in disrupting Viasat satellite services at the start of the Ukraine invasion, suggesting similar tactics might be at play.
However, most technical experts favored simpler explanations. The distributed nature of Starlink's constellation makes it extremely difficult to disable through physical means, as it would require destroying thousands of satellites spread across multiple orbital planes. A cyberattack targeting the ground control infrastructure or a botched software update seemed more plausible.
Service Recovery and User Impact
Users began reporting restored service after several hours, with many terminals automatically rebooting and downloading software updates. The recovery process appeared to be gradual, with some regions coming back online before others. For many rural users who depend entirely on Starlink for internet access, the outage highlighted both the service's importance and its potential vulnerability.
My boss is in a cabin in the wilderness somewhere and his only access to the internet is via Starlink, so that's great news!
The incident marked one of the most significant outages since Starlink's early operational days, when such disruptions were more common. The service has generally maintained strong reliability in recent years, making this global failure particularly noteworthy for its scope and duration.
Starlink acknowledged the outage on social media, stating they were actively implementing a solution but provided limited details about the root cause. As of UTC+0 2025-01-24, service appears to have been restored globally, though the company has not yet released a detailed post-mortem analysis of what went wrong.
Reference: HIGH-SPEED INTERNET AROUND THE WORLD