A series of recent announcements from companies around the world has ushered in the season for space-based cell phone services. Huawei will use its latest device, the Mate 60 Pro, this summer to upgrade its China-dedicated satellite service from messaging to video calling, while AST SpaceMobile will use a prototype BlueWalker 3 satellite and a standard Samsung Galaxy S22 made the first 5G voice and data call. His September announcement of Apple’s latest phone mentioned subtly expanding its emergency satellite messaging service to include roadside assistance.
This flurry of activity shows that companies are making strides in providing mobile phone services via satellite.“I would say most initiatives have moved from the establishment phase to the consolidation phase,” says Derek Long, head of telecommunications at Cambridge Consultants.
But consolidation doesn’t necessarily mean each company is achieving the goals it set last year. At the beginning of 2023, I reported my predictions about the expected progress of these and other companies this year. Now, in October, after a milestone summer, it seems only fair to see how those predictions turned out.
“While last year saw a jumpstart on expectations for space-based cellular networks, companies are now becoming more realistic about how difficult it will be to develop more advanced capabilities.” —Tim Farrar, Tim Farrar Associates, Consultant
Publicly traded AST SpaceMobile announced late last year that it plans to launch its first five commercial satellites in late 2023. At the time of writing, AST is still testing the capabilities of the year-old BlueWalker 3 satellite, and a representative said: Long said the company plans to launch its first commercial satellite in early 2024. He said the successful test of voice satellite calls was a “significant” achievement, but much depended on how much capacity the company could launch.
Apple made no promises, but I predicted that Apple’s competitors were “unlikely to begin commercial operations before 2024.” Just one day before this article was published, Huawei started offering equivalent satellite messaging over the China Telecom network for users of its then-new smartphone Mate 50, and that’s a mistake. It turns out that. The satellites that power Apple’s services are from Globalstar, and the company reported this year that it received additional funding from Apple to launch at least 17 satellites in 2025 in exchange for 85 percent of Globalstar’s bandwidth. did.
Huawei did not respond to recent update requests, but has released its next satellite phone in late August 2023. Not only has the phone impressed U.S. government officials with its processing power, but it also has a chip specifically designed for satellite communications. An 80-minute satellite call costs 100 Chinese Yuan (approximately $13.71), and 200 minutes costs 200 Yuan (approximately $27.42).
Lynk Global, a privately held company, announced late last year that it would “offer commercial services” by spring 2023. [mobile network operator] Partner. ” On June 21, just one day late from the deadline, Lynk announced its first commercial service (Emergency Broadcast Service) in Palau. A similar agreement was announced in the Cook Islands in August.
T-Mobile USA has not responded to requests for comment on its progress since its August 2022 announcement that it would partner with SpaceX to provide satellite-based messaging and data services, and has not delivered promised services to customers. Not yet. Additionally, T-Mobile and SpaceX have not issued any new press releases regarding their satellite cell phone services since their announcements last year. If it works, the network will be designed to be backward compatible with most existing 4G mobile devices.
Currently, Lynk is the only service offering backwards compatibility, and AST is aiming to be next. The Apple/Globalstar and Huawei/China Telecom services work on modern terminals (and will work on future devices) with chips tuned for the bandwidth companies get from traditional satellite networks.
“Expectations for space-based cellular networks got ahead of the curve last year, but now companies can develop more advanced features beyond the basic messaging available on the iPhone,” said communications consultant Tim Farrar. “We’re becoming more realistic about how difficult it is.” , of Tim Farrar Associates in Menlo Park, California.
Long said the new avenue for growth in satellite devices is the Internet of Things. For example, Sateriot is a small startup that this summer connected standard his IoT devices to his space-based 5G-IoT network. Sateriot has signed agreements with mobile network operators around the world to begin commercializing access, but faces competition from other startups including Lacuna Space, OQ Technology and large incumbents. . “They offer global IoT connectivity at extremely low cost,” Long said, and both could help accelerate his IoT market, which has been slow to take off so far.
In fact, Globalstar is already seeing rapid growth in non-Apple revenue from IoT services, and at the recent Mobile World Congress, the CEO said the company is aiming for the private IoT market.
So while we may not all be able to stream video over satellite networks from our phones yet, region by region, use case by use case, carriers are launching satellites in orbit into the world’s mobile networks. It’s starting.
