T-Mobile’s highly anticipated satellite services, powered by SpaceX’s Starlink network, officially launched yesterday. The carrier took the opportunity to poke fun at competitors AT&T and Verizon, who are still striving to catch up. Ironically, just hours after T-Mobile’s rollout, the Starlink network experienced a major outage, leaving many potential users frustrated and questioning the reliability of the new service. Reports suggest that the outage may have stemmed from a problematic software update.
Starlink confirmed that key software components had encountered failures. Elon Musk took to his platform, X (formerly Twitter), to assure users that the issue would be addressed quickly and that such an incident would not occur again. The disruption lasted approximately 2.5 hours, affecting tens of thousands of users worldwide. Fortunately, the issue seems to have been resolved, with the majority of the Starlink network now back online.
T-Mobile’s collaboration with Starlink aims to tackle the issue of dead zones in cellular coverage. While this launch has been long anticipated, prior beta testing phases had yielded generally positive reviews, leading to high expectations for the official rollout. As for the competition, AT&T and Verizon are not far behind in the satellite service race. Both companies are collaborating with AST SpaceMobile to develop their own satellite-texting options.
Once all major carriers are up and running with satellite services, areas with weak cell reception should be significantly diminished. T-Mobile plans to introduce satellite-powered data plans later this year, ahead of its competitors’ public announcements. The recent Starlink outage serves as an important reminder that even advanced networks can have technical difficulties, highlighting the need for reliability in critical situations. Let’s hope similar issues don’t arise when users need the service most.