BT will not launch its partnership with Elon Musk's Starlink until "the noise has died down" over controversial recent disruptions in the satellite provider's service which hindered Ukraine's military, its chief executive said, Report informs referring to the Financial Times.
Allison Kirkby said the service was "ready to launch" but that BT was "cautious on how Starlink might be viewed at the moment considering what happened in Ukraine a couple of weeks ago."
Kyiv was blindsided by unexplained signal failures on Musk's Starlink systems last month, which disrupted frontline communications and hindered military missions amid escalating Russian attacks.
The disruptions came at a time of tension between US President Donald Trump and his counterpart in Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose armed forces rely heavily on Starlink for battlefield connectivity. Ukraine's access to Starlink has since been fully restored.
"We will only launch it proactively when we feel the noise has died down a little bit on Elon Musk and Starlink as a result of the Ukraine thing," Kirkby told the FT.
Musk said on X last month that Starshield, the version of Starlink developed for the Pentagon, was "owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS". The US government denied ordering the restrictions.
When BT announced the Starlink partnership last November, the FTSE 100 company said it expected the service to be available in "the latter half of 2026".
Through the partnership, BT will use Starlink satellites to provide connectivity to customers in areas which are not covered by its fibre broadband network, Openreach, which spans roughly 25mn homes. Kirkby has described it as representing "a giant leap" for rural connectivity.
In a statement on Monday evening, Kirkby said "offering the best products for our customers means working with the best partners", and that BT would launch satellite broadband with Starlink "in the coming months."