Starlink Direct to Cell Services Start in 2024

Starlink satellites will soon be offering Direct to Cell capabilities to enable texting, calling, and browsing everywhere on Earth. SpaceX will start satellite-based text messaging in 2024 and expand to voice and text support in 2025. They will offer cellular connectivity to IoT devices in 2025. The service will work with existing LTE phones without the need for any hardware, firmware changes, or special apps.

Direct to Cell will also connect IoT devices with common LTE standards. SpaceX plans to equip its future Starlink satellites with an advanced eNodeB modem. This innovation will essentially transform a Starlink satellite into a cellphone tower in space.

This will be enabled by tens of thousands of satellites and eventually millions of satellites will replace most of the 5 million cell towers on Earth. It will means everyone and everything can be connected. All people, robots, and self driving vehicles will be connected.

19 thoughts on “Starlink Direct to Cell Services Start in 2024”

  1. Outside only in direct line of site of a starlink satellite. This is not an alternative in anyway to your existing cell phone provider. Maybe something you can use in an emergency situation.

    • Visible light, the kind that produces color, is higher frequency than the EMF used by radio. If you think radio is going to hurt you, you should probably also sit in a pitch black cave so that you cannot see.

      And there, in your cave, you can enjoy your long and healthy life.

        • Only the ultraviolet light which is higher energy than the visible spectrum causes cancer. So that’s not the comeback you thought it was. Microwave radiation is completely harmless unless you’re in a small enclosed box with 1000watts of it or you’re literally hugging the top of a transmission tower, but either way it’s just heating effects, not cancer related.

        • Incorrect, the frequency must be even higher than visible to cause negative effects. The frequencies that begin to denature proteins are ultraviolet: not visible.

    • This is such a genius system, such a novel idea. It’s almost as if 1996 and Motorola Iridium never existed!
      Everything Musk does always puts the shine on it! ☀

  2. This is great, because in some remote regions you dont get ordinary cell phone coverage. So if you do mountaineering or remote trekking activities it will increase safety. You can text if there is a problem and dont need expensive, heavy sat phone for that.

  3. Since I think companies have to go by the laws of the country they operate in and it is against International law to provide communications to citizens of a country without their rulers’ consent it will be interesting to see if they just won’t offer service to some places or require copies of transmissions via satellite to be sent to regimes’ intelligence departments.

    It sure would be nice to have a form of global communication that dictators and UN regulations can’t stop or surveil.

    • I suspect we won’t see that until at least one company moves off planet. There was a time, long ago, when the US government would back an American company against a foreign despot’s demands for local censorship, but it’s long gone. These days our own government is as likely to be pressuring them to censor us, and the despots are to demand their own people be censored.

  4. I suspect low bandwidth functions on X will work from anywhere via Starlink including payments, banking, crypto, text messaging, etc.

  5. This is literally one of the reasons I’m with T-Mobile, rather than accepting an otherwise attractive offer from another network; We live near mountains, and love hiking in them, but it puts us out of contact for long periods.

    I’m personally not bothered by the lack of incoming messages, but if I broke my ankle five miles from the trail head it sure would be nice to be able to get out even a text message.

    • I wouldn’t hold my breath. Elon is known to be ‘optimistic’ about timeline promises, and the real world performance/availability is still an unknown. You can always switch back to T-Mobile!

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