Elon Musk’s Starlink has announced it will provide free satellite internet across Venezuela for a month following two devastating back-to-back earthquakes that killed at least 188 people, injured more than 1,500 and caused widespread destruction across the country.
The announcement came on 25 June, a day after a magnitude 7.2 foreshock struck near Morón on the Caribbean coast, followed just 39 seconds later by a 7.5 magnitude mainshock — the strongest earthquake to hit Venezuela in more than a century. The twin quakes triggered the collapse of buildings in Caracas and other major population centres, knocked out power and telecommunications infrastructure across large parts of the country, and sparked hundreds of aftershocks. A state of emergency has been declared.
Starlink confirmed via its official X account that free service would be available through 25 July 2026 for both new and existing customers affected by the disaster, with automatic service credits applied. The company said it was deploying terminals rapidly to the hardest-hit areas to restore connectivity for emergency responders, families and communities cut off by the destruction of ground-based infrastructure.
The move is a practical response to one of the most acute problems facing disaster zones, where damaged telecoms networks leave survivors unable to contact family members, coordinate rescue efforts or access emergency information. Starlink’s low-Earth-orbit satellites can provide resilient connectivity precisely in the circumstances where traditional ground-based networks fail. The company offered a similar free service period in Venezuela earlier this year during political upheaval between January and February 2026.
Venezuela’s telecommunications infrastructure had already been under significant strain before the earthquakes. The scale of the seismic event, with connectivity dropping sharply nationwide in the immediate aftermath, made the Starlink intervention particularly significant for emergency response operations.
