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This is for very low bandwidth text communications when you're out in the country and can see the sky.
Stuff like this has existed from companies like garmin for some time. This is very cool, though.
Here is when this was announced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qzli-Ww26Qs
Pretty cool! Also kindof funny to see the TMobile CEO trying to hype people up and Elon sortof reigning it in.
But low-bandwidth text is all I need. I guess I won't be renewing my subscription for my InReach Mini forever (although that form factor is pretty nice).
I don't need to be able to stream Netflix when I'm in the backcountry, it's just that my wife insists I need to be able to get a helicopter if I break my leg.
Now we need app developers to log off their fiber-served wifi when writing messenger apps, and log into a high-latency, low-bandwidth, high-packet-loss network instead so Messages will actually open instead of whatever it's trying to do to upload my location history and download contact pictures...
Obviously we shouldn't pretend sat phones from Garmin and others haven't existed for decades, but Starlink direct to cell is very different. First, as others have mentioned, traditional sat phones requires dedicated hardware with a chonky antenna; this works with normal cellphones, which means order of magnitude higher adoption. Maybe more fundamentally, the satellites that existing sat phones use are in much higher orbits so there is irreducible latency (due to speed of light) and bandwidth costs that LEO Starlink sats will likely crush in the next few years.
It’s too bad you’ll still need a “regular” cellular sub to take advantage of this. If I didn’t, this gets me a lot closer to “cutting” the wireless plan cord.
I’m usually in wifi range and being able to have a few kb/s of comms is basically the lifeline I need.
Most of my cell activities are cached on my phone: podcasts, maps, some increasingly out of date weather.
Would be even cooler if it could “broadcast” some regular stuff like news and traffic updates (dunno how that could integrate with Waze…)
The first kb/s gets me a loooot of value and each additional is less useful than the last. Data is very much diminishing returns.
The difference here is you don't need a dedicated device or service, you can just use your existing cell phone. As Starlink is only providing the backhaul and cell carriers their spectrum, service will improve as the constellation grows not whenever the carriers feel like investing in it.
> Stuff like this has existed from companies like garmin for some time.
No, this is entirely different from what Garmin and others sell.
Those devices require dedicated hardware (and a subscription plan) to talk to satellites. Also you can only send and receive text messages. (no voice, extremely limited data (like weather reports))
What SpaceX are doing uses a completely normal phone, with a completely normal phone plan. It's text for now, but voice and data are coming.
> This is for very low bandwidth text communications when you're out in the country and can see the sky.
From the graphic in the article:
> Text: 2024
> Voice and Data: 2025
> IOT: 2025
The starlink website directly says "texting, calling, and browsing"
That’s not what the site says. It’s different than what’s available now.
The gain on those antennas must be insane, any idea how they work? There are millions of devices down there (from the angular resolution perspective of the satellite).
Please disrupt the personal satellite beacon market. Currently the only options are proprietary devices that cost several hundred dollars AND a subscription plan that will run you $12 a month or more.
CLECs in space~!
Because, as the FCC is likely to realize, once SpaceX (a US company) is acting as a common carrier for other service provider networks, they will end up being required to carry at reasonable cost and without deprioritization anyone who wishes to do business upon their network with customers, under equitable terms to (in this case) T-Mobile and others — just like the old copper-line DSL networks of the nineties. Space is a limited resource and SpaceX’s exclusive network will ensure a regulatory climate that Elon will loathe, and I expect be compelled under telecom law to accept and obey. I can’t wait to see it.
Happily, anyone could write the FCC and ask what their plans are regarding CLECs and SpaceX today — or, for example, ask questions like “Which US governing body regulates the SpaceX common carrier network?”. https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/filing-informal-complai... is ready and waiting :)
"wherever you may be on land, lakes, or coastal waters"
I wonder why the limitation to coastal waters? They've been cracking down on offshore sailors using Starlink with the RV/Roaming plan, too. By all accounts it worked fine, but SpaceX wants to charge significantly more for an offshore plan.
It certainly can't be a congestion issue.
Can anyone explain this from an RF/networking perspective? What frequencies does this operate at? How well matched are the antennas in most phones? How much more power are you using to be able to do this? What kind of modulation are you using for TX/RX?
They used to launch 60 satellites per launch, now they launch 21. I'm guessing this hardware is a big part of the reason why. It needs a folding antenna much larger than the ones used for the broadband service.
"Direct to Cell works with existing LTE phones wherever you can see the sky. No changes to hardware, firmware, or special apps are required, providing seamless access to text, voice, and data."
"Starlink satellites with Direct to Cell capability have an advanced eNodeB modem onboard that acts like a cellphone tower in space, allowing network integration similar to a standard roaming partner."
It looks like all that's new here is the website: the service itself has been announced for over a year now. Here's one story about it from March: https://www.engadget.com/spacex-is-getting-ready-to-test-its...
And here's a story covering the initial announcement in August 2022 as a partnership with T-Mobile: https://www.engadget.com/t-mobile-starlink-partnership-01253...
I'm very curious how this will work on a technical level.
My estimate is that (at least initially) it won't be actual texting (i.e. SMS) – unmodified LTE and 5G seem way too verbose to be able to handle the constraints of a much higher number of devices per base station, combined with the significantly higher transmission delay and free space path loss.
One of the IoT spinoff standards of LTE and 5G seem much more plausible candidates – they are built with very similar constraints (extremely low received signal strengths, many devices per base station etc.) and are already being successfully used for satellite applications. I've been testing one device using geostationary satellites myself.
But that would require updates to both the baseband firmware and OS of current or future phones (if not entirely new basebands!), and at that point it's going to be very interesting to see whether Apple (accounting for a very large share of the US market) will play along with that or rather push their own (Globalstar-based) satellite solution.
Related from 6 months ago, "SpaceX based 4G/5G coverage coming to New Zealand": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35432008
The page then stated regarding LTE bandwidth: "We will provide 2-4mbps download or uplink per beam. [...] Each beam will cover a 50km diameter on the ground."
[https://web.archive.org/web/20230402230610im_/https://conten...]
Global connectivity is amazing but a part of me has this feeling of losing something. It will be no longer possible to be away from everything unless you seek it actively. Overall it’s a good thing but it still makes me sad in a particular way that I don’t have a word to describe it.
Say what you will about Elon but man Starlink and Spacex really seem like amazing products!
What is the approximate value of Google's investment in SpaceX now? Would Google have to disclose if it bought more stake or sold any of its original stake?
https://spacenews.com/google-spacex-investment-is-900-millio...
(disclosure: googler, just something I've been curious about and figured someone here would have more insight on)
This is exciting! My family has an off-the-grid cabin which has weak LTE service. Using Starlink is possible (and other people in the area use it) but the power demands are quite high. I was going to first try a 4g antenna hooked up to a local hotspot, but this might give us other options. It's a little unclear how it works from this info - hopefully they have a version that individuals can stand up if there's no network operator in their area.
This looks like the end of the road for Swarm. They are a small cube sat company that provides occasionally connected data packet connectivity globally. Space X bought them in 2021. The cofounder is now one of the main leaders of direct to cell.
How it works with totally unmodified cellular hardware? I thought there are physical max limits on cell size and they were lower than LEO orbits.
Could it in future allow for LTE speeds? Could it work in any place where regular starlink could?(assuming SpaceX ignores licensing rules for countries who says it's their territory/it's high seas/they got license).
What about 911/112?
All I got to say is if this is realized, this will be game changing in terms of geopolitics, intelligence and economics. They said they partnered with local telecom providers, but the thing is they ideally don't need to.
I am not a member of a nation which is in very good relations with the nation of the company here (America), and for this sole reason I hate the centralization of power with progressing technology. Don't bother telling me X tech is actually decentralizing. Yes it probably is, yet please compare the modern world with 1000s to see the amount of centralization. In my country, in the case of a war, if Google Maps were to stop operating, many forms and a high percentage of the transportation and cargo delivery would grind to a halt. If Visa and Mastercard stop operating an even bigger chaos would immediately ensue.
Thank God we at least own the internet infrastructure.
Assuming reasonable affordability, when this becomes broadly available - would definitely use this as primary texting service in the backcountry but still bring Garmin Inreach Mini as back-up / emergency nav. The UI/UX for texting via Garmin's messenger app on iphone is very good...syncs contacts, etc. Limited to text vs. multimedia (assuming pictures would not be available until '25 via Starlink as part of 'data' launch?). As with all satellite services, connectivity comes/goes with Garmin - would expect the same for Starlink.
A real gamechanger for emergency/SAR situations would be if one could enable the Starlink service from an iPhone _while_ in the backcountry vs. needing to set it up a priori...many people realize they wish they had an InReach once bad things occur. Don't imagine that is possible today.
According to the Optus press release [1] this will a service Starlink sells to phone companies to extend their coverage. This is a big deal in Australia because 60% of the land mass still has no standard phone coverage. Telstra has the best rural phone coverage by far, so if you frequently go to the wilderness you use Telstra. If Starlink lives up to the promises, I suspect a lot of people will be switching from Telstra to Optus over the next few years.
[1] https://www.optus.com.au/about/media-centre/media-releases/2...
Strong doubts about voice service being useful, assuming 2-4mbps per 50 km diameter spot.
The point of cellular is frequency reuse. If your cell is huge that's one channel blocked for that entire area. You can't reuse the it within that area to serve more terminals with more bandwidth. So the system capacity will suck.
Number of simultaneous voice users would be limited to the capacity of a single channel for 2000 sqkm. Don't hope for much.
So what they used to need a pizza sized phased array antenna that draws 10 Amps for is now possible with existing hardware? A bit impossible to believe unless there's a major caveat. I suppose it wouldn't be too hard to get the signal to the ground, but how can the satellites receive anything from the phone?
Regardless, if this works then infinite range robotics with just a 4G modem is now possible. Anyone wanna fly a solar powered RC plane across the Atlantic? :P
Is this as good as it appears? Is the answer to connectivity to every remote deployment of tech just "use starlink direct"?
That was tried before by Iridium (owned by Motorola). It was killed by local ground/mobile network operators based on unfair competition rules. In the end lots of countries demanded Iridium opened a local company and exchange. What makes Elon think he'll win this time?
How many simultaneous users can this tech support? I.e. how does it scale? (Per satellite?)
I’m also a little bit grossed out by all these competing satellite networks filling up LEO, and having to more or less continuously launch new satellites to replace the existing failing ones.
I look forward to this eliminating the need for the ground station, too, and just connecting directly to the user's carrier wherever it is in the world.
(Yes, there are politics involved there. That's part of why I look forward to that being bypassed.)
Overuse of the SOS feature for non-emergency situations, and false activations are already taxing Search-and-Rescue organizations. Starlink will make this MUCH worse. (Source: Accidents in North American Mountaineering 2023)
Can someone eli5 how this works. Wouldn’t the phone expend a lot of power to transmit?
T-Mobile is forcing all of it's unlimited data plan users to more expensive plans without a choice under the justification that it's part of the Sprint merger.
The roaming charges in space are insane. ;)
So we will have two providers in the near future: SpaceX and AST SpaceMobile
If you have Starlink in a rural area, you’ll notice it always wants to point towards that one cell tower the distance.
Starlink has always been primarily a high gain 4G/5G antenna.
What’s the difference between this and https://lynk.world/ or AST?
Will this support SOS calling on mobile? e.g. If I’m with a non-partnered carrier and I dial 112, will I be connected to local emergency services?
Why is it just T-Mobile in the US? Is there something about that carrier that supports this service, or could Verizon get this capability too?
Will this allow for mobile hotspotting? (using one's mobile as a source of internet for other devices e.g. laptop)
This is what “6G” wireless is like. Lack of coverage is holding back wireless applications more than anything else and it does not matter at all if any other attributes of performance improve if nothing is done about coverage. And this is the only way to do it unless people invent gravity wave, neutrino or axion radio.
Anybody know what bands they'll use? There must be FCC filings somewhere...
Pretty cool that they are enforcing reciprocal access to all partners globally.
I like the choice of simple language on the landing page.
Cool development!