'Seamless Connections': High-Stakes Challenges of Direct Satellite-to-Smartphone Race
13:57 GMT 18.10.2022 (Updated: 20:22 GMT 19.10.2022)
CC0 / Travis Ellis /
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Increasingly more satellite operators are considering jumping onto the direct-to-cell capability bandwagon to provide connectivity directly to standard phones, thus hoping to make former mobile “dead zones” a thing of the past.
The satellite industry is gearing up to enter the race to provide direct connectivity to smartphones on the ground. The jostle for direct-to-cell capability has shifted into high gear, with several product launches announcing dedicated cell-compatible constellations, US media outlets reported.
The stakes are high, as are the potential rewards of successfully getting into the satellite-smartphone business. Smartphone makers Apple and Huawei recently launched models able to connect to a partner’s satellites for emergency messaging services. Thus, Apple’s iPhone 14 and Huawei’s new flagship Mate 50 series can offer limited SOS services beyond the reach of terrestrial cell towers.
Innovative technology can finally allow the realization of the ambitious but expensive goal of fifth-generation mobile Internet connection functioning between cellphone towers even in remote areas.
However, the goal is also an expensive one. Apple Inc. is cited as making a hefty down payment in September, when it unveiled the Emergency SOS via satellite iPhone feature tailored to send distress signals from anywhere in the US and Canada. Apple agreed to pay satellite company Globalstar Inc. up to $230 million in 2023 for most of its network capacity, according to securities filings cited by The Wall Street Journal.
Apple, which plans to launch its feature in November, is not the only company getting into the satellite-smartphone business. According to Iridium Communications Inc., a US company headquartered in McLean, Virginia that operates the Iridium satellite constellation of 66 active satellites, it is developing a smartphone-capable service with an unnamed partner.
Iridium CEO Matt Desch told World Satellite Business Week in Paris on September 12 that it will “be involved in a big way” in work on direct-to-cell technology.
27 April 2022, 02:45 GMT
Chinese smartphone maker Huawei Technologies Inc. has touted its newest handsets that can send one-way emergency messages through China’s Beidou global positioning system.
SpaceX, a rocket company led by billionaire Elon Musk, in August revealed it would join forces with T-Mobile US Inc. to make its Starlink service compatible with the US cellphone carrier’s network. Text and picture messaging services would be available in the United States “as soon as late next year,” T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert said during an August 25 event at SpaceX Starbase in Texas. It was added that voice, video streaming, and other high-bandwidth capabilities would "come at an unspecified time."
Several startups have not shied away from the race, with AST SpaceMobile Inc., Omnispace LLC, and Lynk Global Inc. all launching new businesses targeting the smartphone-to-space connectivity challenge.
In this photo made with a long exposure, a string of SpaceX StarLink satellites passes over an old stone house near Florence, Kan., on Thursday, May 6, 2021.
© AP Photo / Reed Hoffmann
But all these achievements are still a far cry from providing phone calls and text messages, let alone 5G service, from space. There is the technical challenge of offering high-speed Internet access via an affordable satellite-linked smartphone. Smartphones would require more advanced components and software to reach the satellites, as they are “moving targets.”
“It’s something we’ve had our eye on for a while... Clearly, there are big technical challenges, mainly just having a link that is powerful enough effectively to access a phone with a very poor performing antenna — relative to the antennas that we normally communicate with from space,” said Steve Collar, CEO of SES Networks, a Luxembourgian-French satellite telecommunications network provider.
Weighing in on the future of such “seamless connections,” Iridium Chief Executive Matt Desch was cited as saying:
“I’m personally a bit of a skeptic,” adding that this is “not a service that the public will see for at least a few years.”
