Elon Musk acknowledges “Starlink Sold Out” issue in Africa… says working to increase capacity

Elon Musk, has acknowledged the Starlink capacity issue in Africa and has offered some reassurance that Starlink is actively working to expand its network capacity.

Currently, Starlink is now sold out in Harare, Lusaka, Nairobi, Abuja, Lagos, Port Harcourt, and Accra due to high demand for the internet service. The overwhelming demand for the service in urban areas, has exceeded the current network capacity.

Where, previously, Starlink would show these places as “Expanding in 2025” it’s now showing them as just “Sold Out”. This has worried Africans in these cities who had not subscribed to the service.

“Sold Out” in the context of Starlink means a complete halt to new Residential subscriptions in these areas. Only those buying business packages can subscribe, and even then, they have to go through local Authorised Resellers who are charging more than Starlink charges when you buy directly from its website.

However, Elon Musk himself acknowledged the issue, tweeting:

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 centers.

The reassurance is great because it shows that even at the very top of the organisation, the high demand situation is known and will probably get some priority. Without a date however, it’s still hard to know how quickly Starlink will solve this.

Besides the company is working hard to expand Starlink to countries that don’t have it at all yet.

Built for sparsely populated areas

Starlink’s popularity in African capital cities seems to have caught the company by surprise. Starlink has admitted that its satellite technology was meant for sparsely rural populated areas where other technologies such as Fibre, LTE and WiMax have found it uneconomical to reach.

In African however, owing to very high internet prices by incumbent providers, a large number of city dwellers have bought Starlink quickly fill up all capacity on the network.

Starlink entry level package for unlimited internet is $30 a month, significantly lower than there ~$150 a month that incumbents were charging.

Fortunately, the Starlink competition has resulted in operators revising their prices downward to keep their customers from going to Starlink. Several operators in Zimbabwe, Econet, Powertel, and Utande have all introduced cheaper packages.