If you are a Starlink user in Zimbabwe and experienced a frustrating lack of internet connectivity at around 1300 hours for approximately thirty minutes, you were not alone. Reports indicated that Starlink was down for the majority, if not all, of its users in Zimbabwe. Furthermore, information from reliable sources suggested that this connectivity issue also affected Starlink users in Kenya, and potentially a broader area across the African continent. This widespread nature of the problem strongly suggested it was unlikely to be related to the heavy rainfall experienced in Zimbabwe. Starlink has not yet issued any official statement concerning the outage. However, the good news is that service appears to have been restored and terminals are now coming back online. While we await further information, we can examine the likely cause of this recent disruption.

What Was the Cause of the Starlink Outage?

Starlink has been truly transformative, especially for internet users in Zimbabwe. It has introduced much-needed competition into the local market and significantly reduced internet costs. Their Residential Lite package, for example, provides a considerable data allowance (a Fair Usage Policy of 1 TB) with speeds up to 100 Mbps per second, all for the relatively affordable price of US$30 per month. These offerings have been unprecedented in Zimbabwe and have spurred other internet providers, such as Liquid Home, the country’s largest, to introduce its own Gigabit internet plans in response to the stiff competition. Starlink has become incredibly popular and is frequently sold out in most towns, cities, and surrounding areas, including Harare and Bulawayo.

Understanding the technical infrastructure of the Starlink network is key to exploring the reasons for the outage. The Starlink network relies heavily on ground stations. Users in Zimbabwe, for instance, connect to satellites passing overhead. These satellites then use lasers to transmit user internet traffic amongst themselves. Eventually, the data is routed to ground internet stations, which are connected to the global fibre network. This system enables Starlink to have very low latency, or exceptionally fast and reliable connections, unlike those offered by traditional satellite technologies.

For optimal connectivity, Starlink partners with internet exchange points, typically in countries with well-established fibre internet infrastructure. In Africa, they have partnered with an internet exchange in Kenya, where they have been building a ground station. It now appears that this station is at least partially operational and is being used to handle traffic. Before the Kenyan ground station was online, Starlink was routing all African internet traffic through ground stations based in Spain. Given the geographic distance between Spain and Zimbabwe and other African countries, this resulted in higher latencies for users. The new Kenyan ground station was intended to rectify this issue.

Yesterday, some technically minded Starlink users in Zimbabwe noticed that their internet traffic was no longer being routed through Spain, but instead through Kenya. This change brought an immediate and significant reduction in latency, often halving the previous delay. However, early speed tests indicated that there were some issues with the overall speed of Starlink internet. While Starlink users had previously been enjoying consistent speeds of over 100 Mbps with the Residential Lite plan and over 200 Mbps with the Residential plan (aside from when Starlink experienced congestion issues last year), the migration to the Kenyan ground station resulted in reduced speeds. Given that we anticipated this migration would take place over a number of days, this remains the most likely area where the problem originated. It seems probable that the system is still being configured, or that there are unresolved issues with the handover of data traffic between the satellites and the Kenyan ground station. This changeover seems to have caused an unanticipated disruption in the service which resulted in the 30 minute outage.

Educated Guess and Future Outlook

At this time, we can only speculate on the exact cause, as Starlink has not yet provided an official explanation for the outage. However, based on our understanding of the system, the migration to the Kenyan ground station remains the most logical and likely cause. We assume that Starlink is currently working diligently to ensure the stability of the connection. Given the importance of internet access, users will be pleased to see service restored, even after this short disruption.

We will continue to monitor the situation and update this article as new information comes to light. We still suggest that Starlink users do not assume a problem with their individual user equipment, as this appears to have been a network-wide issue. We also invite users to share their experiences in the comments section below.