Starlink has brought back its waitlist for cities in the Western US, citing capacity concerns in parts of the country.
Starlink’s availability map shows that the service is “sold out” in several US cities and their surrounding areas, including Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, San Diego and Austin. Other North American cities like Toronto, Edmonton and Mexico City are also on the waitlist.
Starlink did not immediately respond to CNET’s questions about the waitlist, but when you try to place an order in one of the areas, you get a message saying, “Starlink is at capacity in your area. Order now to reserve your Starlink. You will receive a notification once your Starlink is ready to ship.” In the past, Starlink has charged a one-time “congestion fee” of $100 for customers in high-usage areas.
The waitlist used to be standard for many customers looking to use SpaceX’s satellite internet service. The news, first reported by PCMag, comes about a year after Starlink eliminated the waitlist. (PCMag is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis.)
This step comes during a period of explosive growth for Starlink. The service is nearing 5 million customers globally — up from 2 million last September — and SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said recently that Starlink will soon reach 2-gig speeds. That’s roughly 25 times faster than customers are currently experiencing.
Bringing back the waitlist could be a sign that Starlink is struggling to keep up with the increased demand for the service in the US.
“We don’t know what Starlink can do at scale yet,” Christopher Ali, professor of telecommunications at Penn State University, told CNET last month. “There have been a lot of studies suggesting that it’s already struggling.”
That said, it’s poised to reap policy benefits under the Trump administration and its new Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, who has been a vocal supporter of Starlink. Carr wrote in his Project 2025 chapter that “the FCC should expedite its work to support this new technology by acting more quickly in its review and approval of applications to launch new satellites.”
In an October FCC filing, Starlink requested approval to increase the number of satellites in orbit from around 6,600 to nearly 30,000. Scientists have voiced concern about how that number of satellites could interfere with astronomical observations and hurt the environment, with 100 researchers sending a letter to the FCC last month asking them to pause new Starlink launches. The company maintains that “no orbital debris is created and no satellite parts hit the ground” at any point, but one study funded by NASA found potentially damaging effects to the ozone.
In its request to the FCC for more satellites and wireless spectrum, the company wrote, “These additional frequencies will significantly improve the upload and download speeds of SpaceX’s earth stations, thereby allowing SpaceX to stay ahead of increasing demand from consumers, enterprises, and government users,”
In other words, Starlink customers might not have to stay on the waitlist for too long.
