Starlink’s satellite internet service has reached capacity in Nigeria’s largest cities, forcing the company to halt new sign-ups and pushing would-be customers onto a waitlist.
- Starlink has ceased accepting new orders in busy Nigerian urban areas due to capacity limits.
- Residents in areas such as Lagos and Abuja encounter ‘Sold Out’ notices on Starlink’s website.
- Starlink previously paused services in Nigeria over bandwidth shortages and regulatory concerns.
- The experience in Nigeria highlights the logistical and regulatory challenges of scaling Starlink in Africa.
Elon Musk’s Starlink has stopped accepting new orders in some of Nigeria’s busiest urban hubs after its satellite internet network hit capacity, putting a spotlight on the challenges of scaling in Africa’s largest market.
In some locations in Nigeria’s commercial nerve center such as Victoria Island, Ikoyi, Ikeja and Surulere, as well as the nation’s capital Abuja, Starlink’s website now displays “Sold Out” notices.
Prospective customers are pushed onto a waitlist and asked to pay a deposit before they can be notified when slots reopen.
A subscription attempt at a popular estate in Lagos’s Maryland area returned the message: “Starlink service is currently at capacity in your area. The good news is you can place a deposit now to reserve a spot on the waitlist and will be notified once service becomes available again.”
“Please note that we cannot provide an estimated timeframe for service availability, but our teams are working as quickly as possible to add more capacity to the constellation so we can continue to expand coverage for more customers around the world.”
A network under strain?
A Starlink engineer told TechCabal that the company occasionally halts new activations to safeguard service quality for existing users.
Adding capacity typically requires either fresh satellite launches or regulatory approval to expand coverage.
However, this isn’t the first disruption. Starlink froze all new orders across Nigeria in late 2024, citing bandwidth shortages and pending approval from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), especially over pricing changes.
Service only resumed mid-2025 after upgrades and regulatory clearance.
The company’s rising costs haven’t helped. Starlink’s monthly fee has climbed from about ₦38,000 ($25) at launch to ₦56,000 ($37) this year, a jump the company attributes to naira devaluation and compliance costs.
The hikes triggered customer backlash and slowed growth.
NCC data shows Starlink lost more than 6,000 active users in Q1 2025, dropping from 65,564 in Q4 2024 to 59,509. It was the first quarterly decline since launch, as some Nigerians abandoned the service for cheaper alternatives or dropped internet subscriptions altogether.
Musk’s Africa expansion faces real-world challenges
The network crunch in Nigeria raises questions about Elon Musk’s broader ambition to expand Starlink into every African market.
While the billionaire entrepreneur has pitched Starlink as a solution to poor connectivity across the continent, Nigeria’s experience highlights the logistical and regulatory hurdles of scaling in fast-growing but economically strained markets.
If capacity is already overstretched in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and one of Starlink’s early adopters, analysts say rolling out service continent-wide will require not only more satellites and ground stations but also stronger engagement with regulators to manage pricing, infrastructure demands, and bandwidth allocation.
In July, Starlink expanded into Chad, becoming its 24th African market. Still, Musk’s goal of blanket coverage across the continent remains distant, with Nigeria emerging as both a key testing ground and a cautionary tale
Global strains visible too
Starlink’s challenges are not confined to Africa. On Monday, the satellite network experienced a brief outage in the United States, with more than 43,000 users reporting problems at its peak, according to tracking site Downdetector.com.
The disruption, later resolved, highlighted the pressures facing the service even in mature markets.
Reuters reports that Starlink’s website initially displayed a notice confirming the outage, saying its team was investigating, before removing the message once connectivity was restored.
The episode underscores a growing reality for Musk’s satellite internet venture: from Nigeria’s congested urban hubs to American suburbs, scaling a constellation of low-Earth orbit satellites to meet surging demand is proving more difficult than the company’s global ambitions might suggest.
