There will be random outages for any space based equipment for awhile. =3
See the graphs of https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/solar-cycle-progression for more info.
This community Starlink Status page doesn't seem to show any outage: https://starlinkstatus.space/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/ paints a different picture
Perhaps due to geomagnetic storms, though stronger ones have not caused outages. Possibly just because.
Because the fickleness and unreliability of the latter is a serious concern. Once other LEO constellations come online, who is going to stick with Starlink, knowing they may pull the plug at anytime on a whim of "Space Karen"?
... it's time to "pick one's poison" again. It's either Amazon which is US based (and thus vulnerable to the same kind of political pressure that Starlink is) or it's IRIS2 (which is good if you're European, but might not be that optimal if US-EU relations go catastrophically sour).
On top of that, Kuiper isn't live yet (IIRC scheduled until 2026 for minimal coverage) and IRIS2 is only predicted for 2029 (and everyone who knows a thing about European cooperation projects knows that this is a seriously optimistic example - we don't even have a flight proven cheap rocket yet).
It's probably down to your expectations. Starlink won't replace a fiber connection, but if you only have a satellite connection or dial up, I can't see it being anything other than an improvement.
One concern I do have is if Starlink is down, there aren't really any backup. On the other hand I also only have one fiber connection at home. It's just that I could get a COAX hookup by tomorrow.
Because that is not the general experience at all. For a service whose necessary parts (the satellites) move in a rather hostile space environment, Starlink doesn't have that many outages.
I am on a Vodafone backbone buried optic cable here in CZ and yet there are a few unplanned short outages each month. Sometimes as short as 10 seconds, but working on a remote screen like my wife does, you definitely notice it.
The most common outage is a regular 3am reboot. Otherwise outages are infrequent and typically a few seconds.
Also the latency is surprisingly good, it's not fibre but can game FPS on it.
One of the best Sci-Fi movies of all time. =3
