Elon Musk’s Satellite internet service provider, Starlink, has suspended new subscriptions to its service in parts of Kenya. These include the capital, Nairobi and six other counties.
According to the company, the reason for the suspension was due to a network overload as too many users were trying to access the service and there wasn’t enough space.
“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 at this time,” the company said in a mail to its customers.
The company also explained that the overload was mainly a result of its affordable internet plans being sold out. Therefore, only those plans that cost above Ksh130,000 per month were still available.
The network overload has also led to service disruptions in the affected areas which also include Thika, Kajiado, Kiambu, parts of Murang’a, Naivasha, Ngong, Machakos and sections of Narok County.
Due to this, customers in Nairobi and other affected counties raised concerns about the company failing to provide roaming service plans through which they could bypass the restrictions affecting the regions.
To this end, the American satellite internet company owned by tech billionaire, Elon Musk said roaming services are not available in Kenya but that the team is working to restore services in affected areas and that users will get notifications once service comes back on.
“No roaming plans are available in Kenya at this time. Starlink is working to restore service in the disrupted areas and a notification will be sent once the residential plan is back,” Starlink added.
A Kenya Times report also suggests that the company had removed African countries from its roaming subscription plan availability list. According to the report, the service currently shows as “Sold Out” for new residential customers in large cities like Harare in Zimbabwe, Lusaka in Zambia, Nairobi in Kenya, and Lagos in Nigeria.
To this end, customers in these countries report download speeds averaging in the low double-digit Mbps, which falls far below Starlink’s advertised speeds.
Stellar Systems, an authorized Starlink retailer in Zambia, had also warned users that misusing the roam plans in unofficially supported countries could trigger a permanent shutdown of the roaming feature.
“We can only hope this is not the case and will update you as soon as we get some feedback from Starlink regarding this,” the company said.
Starlink appears to be witnessing tremendous growth in Africa. Its Kenyan subsidiary is no different as the company has boosted satellite data subscriptions in the country. According to the fourth quarter industry statistics report by Kenya’s Communications Authority (CA), subscribers grew by a really impressive 1,955.3%.
