To clarify for those that may have missed it -

These satellites mimic 5G so most existing 5G phones should be compatible without additional hardware.

The beams are REALLY low bandwidth (7MB per beam and the beams are “very big”), and that bandwidth is shared with the whole beam. You will only use this for emergencies, at least for now.

The point will be to expand coverage in areas that it may be difficult to add coverage. It won’t replace or augment regular towers.

It will only allow texting later this year, and they expect to scale up to voice and data next year as well as IOT - whatever that means since they broke it out separately.

Meta: the Slashdot article points to:

* https://spacenews.com/spacex-deploys-direct-to-smartphone-sa...

Perhaps that would be a better link.

Most folks commenting seem to miss the fact this is for text messages only, and likely "emergency" ones, i.e. rate limited, at that. This would not result in power drain during normal LTE operation, but - my guess - would instead check with the satellite to send/recv txt messages every now and then AND only when not in LTE coverage.

Weird to see a link to Slashdot these days. My immediate reaction is that it's either a historical article or news they're shutting down. I used to read it daily, much like HN.

I wonder if they did any SAR level testing on those phones. I mean I’m sure that cell phone has to use a lot of power to transmit to a satellite and I know from FCC regulations you can’t be closer than 11 inches from a stink dish when it’s in operation. I know the two are not the same just to comparison. Of power.

Apparently it does not support the non-terrestrial networks (NTN) 5G standards [1],[2]. Perhaps it is not a bad thing since 5G phones with NTN capability are just being released but this will make it not future proof. Since it is not Starlink main business of providing satellite cellular services, it should be fine.

[1] Starlink indicates its satellite-to-phone service will drop next year:

https://www.telecoms.com/telecoms-infrastructure/starlink-in...

[2] Connecting the world with 5G NTN:

https://www.rohde-schwarz.com/se/solutions/test-and-measurem...

[dupe]

Discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38856845

Can this be used to triangulate my phone from space? Like, can roaming towers be used for triangulation of a specific phone?

Cool stuff, but it sure looks like they shipped a premature version asap to front-run the competition.

AST SpaceMobile is getting ready for commercial ops this year with „full broadband“ 5G satellites.

For the record, I am not affiliated with them. I just need that kind of service desperately.

Sounds (and is) cool, but it breaks the whole concept of cellular, severely limiting system capacity. Hard to see it scaling up to provide voice for many simultaneous users.

Satellite to smartphone can cover gaps in rural areas, but unlikely to be high bandwidth or support many users.

It seems like a very expensive solution for a problem that was mostly solved 15 years ago

As I'm reminded, ASTS is far ahead in this area.

https://twitter.com/AST_SpaceMobile/status/17434215614224303...