Starlink Pauses New Subscriptions in Africa, Says Elon Musk

American business mogul and Starlink internet service owner Elon Musk has explained why the company paused new sign-ups in several urban centres in Africa.  In a statement, Musk said the internet provider was working to increase capacity in urban areas in Africa to meet the demand.

He, however, said that areas outside urban areas still have good internet coverage. Starlink is working to increase Internet capacity in dense urban areas in Africa as fast as possible Please note that there is still significant capacity outside of city centres, Musk said on X.

In an earlier alert, Starlink notified users that there would be no new subscriptions for the residential plan in Nairobi owing to a network overload. It further explained that there are many users in Nairobi on the service, which is what led to an overload.

Nairobi and neighbouring areas are currently at network capacity. This means that too many users are trying to access the Starlink service within Nairobi, and there isn’t enough bandwidth to support additional residential or roaming customers now, Starlink said.

Areas neighbouring Nairobi were also listed to be among the areas that have been affected by the overload. They include Thika, Kajiado, Kiambu, Naivasha, Ngong, Machakos and parts of Narok. The Elon Musk-owned company advised those who plan to subscribe to leave their email addresses, which would be used to notify them once the service is back.

Starlink was introduced to the country a few months ago and has been causing disruptions in the internet service industry in Kenya. This has seen local providers register the need to have Starlink controlled or distributed through their services. Unlike other service providers, Starlink uses satellite to distribute its internet while others use fibre. Starlink boasts of high internet speeds compared to the others and is believed to provide affordable subscription fees once one acquires its infrastructure.