SpaceX has completed 24 planes of 13 sats per plane at a 53 deg inclination for the Direct to Cell constellation. Once raised to 360 km, it will be plugged in to service.
Direct to Cell is open for business for any telco in the world that wants to eliminate dead zones for text and then data in their country.
@TMobile and several other companies have already partnered for this service.
The FCC has authorized the service.
This launch completes 24 planes of 13 sats per plane at a 53 deg inclination for the Direct to Cell constellation. Once raised to 360 km, it will be plugged in to service.
Direct to Cell is open for business for any telco in the world that wants to eliminate dead zones for text… https://t.co/4Ss1pPgvSz pic.twitter.com/7jyaW5R7kv
— Ben Longmier (@longmier) December 5, 2024
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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How does this monetize?
Will this be a bane for other cell services?
My guess is that the cell phone operators buy into it and has to pay Starlink for use.
It would still be much cheaper than putting towers everywhere.
Operator can then charge the customer extra if they want.
The genius thing about Starlink is that it works better there its few other users.
Its the opposite of 5g who is about giving more bandwidth there its lots of people.
Nice, but will it work indoors or even under trees? What will it do to my battery life?
no, there must be clear line of sight to the satellites. No physical obstruction. Have you tried to get radio signal for other devices?
Looking forward to trying it out this spring. Maybe my wife will stop insisting we stand around whenever she hits a random pocket of cell reception while we’re hiking in the mountains. Or insisting that we absolutely have to make it to the next ridge, because she knows we’ll be in view of a cell tower there.
These satellites will get just above the horizon for someone at 70 degrees north or south. I wonder how much closer to the equator you would have to be to use them for communication. Would someone in eg: northern Norway be able to use them?
Given range considerations, (Your cell phone doesn’t exactly have a large, optimized antenna!) unless the satellite is basically directly overhead, it’s not doing you any good.
Norway will have to wait on the constellation being expanded. So will Alaska.
On the North is mostly northern Alaska, Canada and parts of northern Europe and Asia the ones affected. Parts of Norway are impacted ofc.
On the South, only people on Antarctica suffer it.
However, I imagine they will soon launch other layers of satellites covering the polar regions, as demand allows. I imagine these satellites will be in high demand, so it wouldn’t take long.