Starlink devices in Canada’s North lost service on Thursday afternoon, with the company reporting what appeared to be a worldwide outage.

While Starlink did not confirm how many users globally had lost service, the firm added a note to the front of its website stating: “Starlink is currently experiencing a service outage. Our team is investigating.”

Later, at 2:05pm, the company added on X: “Starlink is currently in a network outage and we are actively implementing a solution. We appreciate your patience, we’ll share an update once this issue is resolved.”

Users in Kugluktuk, Nunavut and the NWT town of Hay River were among the first to contact Cabin Radio about a loss of service shortly after lunch on Thursday.

Starlink users and news organizations in the United States, United Kingdom and India also confirmed outages in those locations.

Advertisement.

Advertisement.

Starlink’s website appeared to crash about an hour after the outage began, returning a “timed out” error message for some users trying to reach it.

“Service will be restored shortly,” read a short statement posted to X by Elon Musk – who owns Starlink operator SpaceX – at 2:30pm MT.

“Sorry for the outage. SpaceX will remedy root cause to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

Many northern Canadian communities have turned to Starlink in part because its satellite-based service has presented itself as a robust alternative to cable internet that can be disrupted by the likes of wildfires.

Advertisement.

Advertisement.

However, cable firms like Northwestel have argued that they offer on-the-ground support in the North in a way Starlink does not.

There was no information immediately available about the cause of Thursday’s outage nor a timeline for service to be fully restored.

Online, users in many countries reported a similar interruption.

The NWT government had said earlier this year, as the US threatened tariffs, that it would look to move away from Starlink – a US-based product – as a service on which it relies. However, earlier this month, the GNWT told NNSL it was struggling to find a comparable alternative.

More follows.

Related Articles