Starlink outage worldwide lasted for over 2 hours — then work was restored. Reasons

Late on the evening of July 24, Starlink experienced a global outage worldwide, including in Ukraine — the connection was down across the entire front line. The company says the outage lasted approximately 2.5 hours.

This was reported by the company itself, as well as its vice president Michael Nichols.

According to the vice president, the cause was a failure of key internal software that controls the operation of the main network.

“We apologize for the temporary disruption to our service — we are deeply committed to ensuring network reliability and will fully investigate the cause of the incident to prevent it from happening again,” Nichols wrote.

The Commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraineʼs UAV Forces Robert Brovdi reported to "Madyar" that as of 00:35–01:05, communication was fully restored in all directions. All this time, combat operations continued, but without online broadcasts.

According to him, this incident, "which lasted 150 minutes, the longest in the war", showed weaknesses. We need to take this into account and diversify the communication — that is, diversify, not focus on just one option.

• In March of this year, when relations between the United States and Ukraine were tense amid a feud between Presidents Zelensky and Trump in the White House, as well as a deal on minerals, the question arose whether Ukraine would be cut off from Starlink. The United States assured that it would not, but Ukraine then began to look for alternatives. Among them, according to media reports, is the French satellite operator Eutelsat.
• Eutelsat was reportedly in talks to use a combination of satellites — OneWeb at an altitude of about 1 200 kilometers above the Earth’s surface and Geo at an altitude of 35 000 kilometers — to boost satellite communications in Ukraine and the Black Sea region. They could provide communications for Ukrainian military drones carrying out strikes against the Russian army.
• Starlink currently has over 7 000 satellites, while OneWeb has less than 700. In addition, the French manufacturerʼs terminals are heavier and not as convenient for rapid movement.

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