Starlink Technical Outages Are Inevitable
Alternatives are always needed, especially for critical networks.
Today’s technical outage of the Starlink satellite communication network shook many, caused numerous publications and speculations, and confirmed a simple rule – alternatives are always needed.
What happened?
September 15, 2025, approximately between 04:30 and 05:15 UTC a global outage of the Starlink network occurred. The outage lasted about ~30–60 minutes and was global, Starlink also reported about it on its profile on X.
According to DownDetector data, the peak number of complaints was >43,000 incidents in the U.S. alone. There were also many reports from Ukrainian users about loss of connection along the entire front line. The cause still remains unknown.
The Starlink network still does not have a status panel or other tools with state indicators. Dominance in the satcom market and the absence of competitive pressure allow Elon Musk’s company to “get by” without additional expenses on information tools familiar to many. Therefore, we usually can only judge the state of the Starlink network based on publicly available data from DownDetector and similar sources.
Thus, the reasons for the outage are not yet known. They may remain unknown. Mentions of solar activity and bursts of geomagnetic disturbances, which can be found online, are not worth attention here – no critical events or space weather effects that could potentially have caused the outage have been identified so far. The current disturbance level is much lower than critical values, almost at the level of the daily “typical background.”
Previous incidents
This is not the first such case. Among the most notable incidents in recent years are several worth noting:
September 13, 2023, night, duration ≈1 hour — global Starlink outage. The official cause was not disclosed; service was restored in a little more than an hour.
July 24, 2025, ~19:13 UTC, duration ≈2.5 hours — global outage. According to the official statement of the VP of Starlink Engineering, the cause was the failure of key internal software services of the core network.
Many have already forgotten, but Starlink is essentially still a planet-scale StartUp. Yes, it is already the largest global satellite communications operator on the planet with more than 7 million subscribers. But the vast majority of technological and operational solutions at SpaceX are in a state of permanent and very dynamic development.
Most likely, over time the situation will change, but for now it should be understood that close attention to SLA (Service Level Agreement — an agreement on the level of service between a service provider and a client) for Starlink is still somewhere ahead. At present, the user essentially has no full alternatives to “escape.”
Conclusions and lessons, including for Ukraine
In fact, I was very pleased (this time) with the informational and professional reaction of the services responsible for technical monitoring and response to such incidents in the Defense Forces of Ukraine. I have also invested in their development in recent years. Of course, there is still much to build, but overall the facts and causes were clarified very quickly.
And the very fact that many faced misunderstanding and problems shows us that at the level of Starlink usage there are still many aspects “not integrated” into existing processes. I know that some of the “decision-makers” will read this publication, and I convey that this deserves attention and action. It is worth integrating your specialists into already developed services and processes.
Technical outages occur in any network of any project or system. Completely avoiding outages is extremely difficult and practically impossible – technologies always evolve. But what is certainly possible and necessary is to account for outages and prepare to maintain communication when outages occur.
The main conclusion from the incident is not new at all – we need alternatives. Alternatives in terms of solutions, systems, and communication tools. Different ones, for different scenarios of use. It is important to understand that there will be no “silver bullet” here – Starlink has indeed become a breakthrough tool for very many scenarios. But those “alternatives” already exist and there will be even more. And we are not only talking about LEO solutions from OneWeb, Amazon Kuiper, and others.
One vivid example is no longer secret – the testing of the new UASAT GEO satellite terminal is being completed. The Ukrainian company STETMAN, which is also the operator of the UASAT satellite network, manufacturer of terminals, and the largest aggregator of satellite solutions in Ukraine – is finalizing the market launch of a new promising solution.
Will UASAT GEO satellite terminals replace the popular Starlink globally – no. But for very many scenarios, this is the best of the possible and available alternatives. Often even the only available alternative, considering availability, price, parameters, and other characteristics. Very soon more information about UASAT GEO will be available.