Starlink receivers served as internet backups after antennas burned near Caracas

Time reports that in the early hours of Saturday, January 3, explosions struck a cluster of antennas on a hill about a mile from a man’s home on the outskirts of Caracas, and the installation caught fire. The resident, who asked not to be identified, said, “I had never heard a bomb go off, never in my life,” and described relying on multiple backups after his Movistar service went down: an eSIM from another provider, fiber-optic internet that continued to work, and two Starlink receivers registered in Colombia and Argentina that connect to satellites operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

That night, after news broke of the U.S. capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, he received an email from Starlink giving him a month of free credit; in a post on X Musk wrote, “In support of the people of Venezuela,” and the company announced it would provide “free broadband service to the people of Venezuela through February 3.” The man said he initially thought it was a domestic coup and only realized what was happening after his daughter urged him to check X.

Starlink does not officially provide service or directly sell receivers in Venezuela and the country remains dark on the company’s service map with no information about when official service might begin.

Key Topics

World, Starlink, Spacex, Elon Musk, Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro