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.
