Existing smartphones will connect with new satellite constellations in 2023
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
It's achieved by "dedicating a slice of T-Mobile's Mid-Band PCS [1.9 GHz] spectrum, to be integrated into Starlink satellites, launched next year", with each Starlink V2 satellite hosting two 5-6 meter long cell-spectrum antennas, in addition to the existing Ka- and Ku-band antennas.
They're aiming for the US with the trial, and growing to global coverage by entering into reciprocal roaming agreements with the international carriers who hold licences to the relevant mid-band spectrum.
Elon Musk says "this won't have the kind of bandwidth that a Starlink terminal would have, but it will enable texting. It will enable images. And if there aren't too many people in the in the cell-zone, you could even potentially have a little bit of video."
Musk claims 2 to 4 megabits per cell-zone, 1000-2000 simultaneous voice calls per cell-zone, with the cell-zone of course being much larger than a terrestrial cell-tower.
[1] https://www.t-mobile.com/news/un-carrier/t-mobile-takes-cove...
> Splashy announcements of satellite-cellular connectivity from Apple, Starlink, and T-Mobile in the third quarter of 2022 promoted the idea of anywhere, any-kind connectivity.
Both Starlink's sat-cells and Apple's Globalstar link will be a real benefit for people who get stuck in a bad situation unprepared, but if I were a serious rock climber or similar, I'd still prefer a full-scale Globalstar, Iridium terminal or EPIRB device, then an iPhone with Globalstar, and only then Starlink's offer.
Remind me in 10 years
https://opensource.googleblog.com/2022/09/lyra-v2-a-better-f...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_code...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotelephony_procedure#Proce...
Remember Musks claims of FSD being X months away (for years), and SpaceX will be cheaper by orders of magnitude, and Twitter will be open to all free speech, and the cyber truck, and new roadster, etc etc? The point is, Musk has shown himself as unreliable and we can hardly trust his claims.
I'm passingly familiar with the old Keyhole/Hubble optical satellites, but I didn't think we launched any of those recently after the Shuttle shut down. The more interesting tech is probably sigint-targeted radio analysis, where antenna and LNA design is more important than physical aperture, I wouldn't be able to tell anything about those with a physical dimension. What would the new satellites launch on?
Looking up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_launches doesn't give much detail, other than that they launched on Falcon 9 and Delta IV rockets.
"These satellites at geostationary orbits collect radio emissions (SIGINT) and act as replacements for the older constellation of Magnum satellites. The satellites have estimated mass close to 5,200 kg and very large (estimated 100 m diameter) radio reflecting dishes."
It'll be like a cool guy is just following you around 24/7 making sure you know what to buy and do and think
Can they animate him (or her) so I don't feel lonely too?
Same size satellite bus as the largest class of things you would see in geostationary orbit (approx 6500 kg and the size of a school bus) but in high inclination orbits around 600 km.
> The satellites have estimated mass close to 5,200 kg and very large (estimated 100 m diameter)[2] radio reflecting dishes. USA-223 (NROL-32), which is seen as the fifth satellite in the series, is according to NRO director Bruce Carlson "the largest satellite in the world".[3] It is believed that this refers to the diameter of the main antenna, which might be well in excess of 100 m (330 ft).[4]
I've never bothered following the citations so I don't know how true this is, but it's pretty insane if it's real. A 100-meter-diameter satellite! I know it's an unfolding-umbrella-style mesh like you said, but still, that's impressive.
FreeCalypso does and is audittable, but it's licencing situation is murky at best. It's based on leaked Texas Instruments sources with a gpl licence stuck on top. But Calypso is essentially abandonware and TI got out of the GSM modem biz in early 2000's so they apparently don't care.
For LTE there's srsUE from Software Radio Systems, but it's a 100% SDR implementation that does not fot any phone and is more of a lab and research tool. But it is open and audittable.
That said, there has been a sigint sat parked close below Thurayas sat for ages.
Gotta be some real weird RF voodoo happening in there.
It seems like a sufficiently fancy phased antenna array on the satellite could compensate for that. Also, the atmosphere is 99% gone at 20 miles up, so that probably helps. Also, with the goal of only supporting SMS, a modern software defined radio chipset could probably be made to use an incredibly low data rate that adds more signal margin than currently used by any cell network.
WiFi has similar limits, but much shorter. I know some usecases of WiFi transceivers with longer distances (~5km) which required tweaked firmware that wasn't technically wifi-compliant, to have longer receive windows.
2. Many users seen at once. Each beam is only a 15-mile-diameter circle. In the really remote areas where this coverage would be needed, I don't suspect that there would be too many cell phones - maybe a few hundred at most.
If you look at apple’s latest feature, even them, with specific hardware probably, requires minutes of open-sky pointing directly at the closest satellite, to transmit mere bytes of data.
That tells me that if your phone is just hanging in your pocket, indoors, with a 5G nearby, it’s not going to reach the satellite at in any shape or form.
Anyway let's wait and see - I'm pretty sure T-Mobile wouldn't have signed on for something that is just a pipedream
I'm not saying that it's impossible, I'm just pointing out your smugness at the fact that it's not common knowledge.
> the Starlink stuff
You mean the stuff that requires a large, hot disc on your roof and therefore not in your pocket? Are we talking about the same things there?
> I'm pretty sure T-Mobile wouldn't have signed
You trust big companies too much, they make mistakes all the time.
Las Vegas and a few other cities did, from the same salesman: https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-boring-company-tunnel...
You can't get an unassisted fix indoors now, but it's totally capable to get a fix near the window.
> pocket, indoors, with a 5G nearby
I assume this tech is to be used outdoors without a 5G nearby.
Globalstar's capabilities aren't frozen either. The Apple deal uses most of their capacity, but they'll be launching additional satellites. While they're not in the current deal, Globalstar could launch a lower LEO service in the future. Cell phones with bigger antennas, like the case antennas in the new iPhones, would have better sat service communicating at Starlink's range.
We're also in relatively early days of large antenna deployment. AST's record-setting antennas are going to look quaint as launch costs and more complicated deployments continue to advance and benefit every satellite network.
LoRa bitrate is very low and the range of LoRa is not even comparable with satellite communication. Moreover, normal smartphone are not LoRa compatible.
> LoRa provides for long-range communications: up to three miles (five kilometers) in urban areas, and up to 10 miles (15 kilometers) or more in rural areas (line of sight)
500km is one magnitude order more than the supposed range. And no phone has a LoRa chipset inside, neither the new ones.
The range limits are really around expected usage given omnidirectional antennas, unlicensed transmission power and terrestrial interference.
For LoS with a small (single) directional antenna it's easy to get another 10db. With a big dish you can go a lot higher.
Apple’s solution works today. Consumers are using it.
This is mentioned in the article.
If we’re looking for existing technology, current actually working GPS phones would be a better showcase of what’s possible.
Of course the range would be limited because of phone batteries, but at least you would not require a large, expensive network of antennas.
I have asked SDR folks about it but they're not convinced.
Just imagine not having to rely on network operators for tiny amounts of data. Only a phone would be required, without paid subscription.
The others are talking about high speed data but haven't tested or demonstrated it from space that I know of. From what I understand it is not easy! I would be surprised if any of their data services launch commercially next year.
I think these plans are used to entice people on PAYG onto a plan, so they don't advertise them to everyone.
For roaming data+voice I use a BNEsim e-sim, which works very well.
Surely there are many factors to this but those Canadian prices still sound insane to me. This website (https://www.cable.co.uk/mobiles/worldwide-data-pricing/#pric...) lists Canada as having 50x more expensive data than Italy for instance.
That website seems... not great?
I think you got a 50x ratio by dividing the average prices of $0.12 (Italy) and $5.94 (Canada).
That appears to be a median...but I'd like to know how they chose the plans they used for the calculation. For example, Canada's maximum price is given as $46.02/GB. Perhaps such a plan is technically available, but I really doubt someone is using it for data, so it seems bizarre to include it in this data set.
For cheapest prices, they cite $0.05/GB for Italy and $1.66/GB for Canada. But off the top of my head, Rogers, which is the #1 telco in Canada, offers $0.74/GB. Seems... odd that it didn't make it into this dataset.
(And hey, I would like to know where I can pay $0.05 to get a GB/data in Italy. Full speed? On a good network?)
I pay $29/mo for unlimited data in Canada. Granted - with caveats! It gets throttled after the first 6 GB. I wonder if this would be counted as $4.83/GB in this survey? Their methodology PDF is unclear.
I meant it mostly as an example of how there can be an order of magnitude of difference between prices, or at least half an order. I do concede my 50x number is probably very inaccurate in practice.
My family's plan is 80$/month for unlimited data for 6 devices, throttled after something like 60GB between all of them. Unused data can be used on the next month. Not once have I worried about reaching any limits, even with frequent Netflix and YouTube on the go and panic downloading Spotify albums before getting on a flight.
Currently I'm paying around US$16/mo for unlimited LTE data with a major celluar provider here, and have been doing so for the past 4-5 years. (no, not unlimited with throttled cap, and with hotspot included)
And with recent 5G plans, unlimited plans (with 50GBs of unthrottled hotspot) can be had for effectively less than $30 a month, or even lower if you consider rebates for buying a phone on contract with them.
North American's celluar plans just seem so expensive.
I pay <$2 per GB in the UK, and I think that's extortionate.
No, they don't.
In the US and a growing number of other countries, the latest iPhones have a satellite network for emergencies.
If tech giants are going to spend money on something cool, might as well use it.
ADDED: There are also perhaps more common situations like going off the road in a snowstorm.
A PLB usually also has a radio transmitter on it that allows rescuers to direction-find your location.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/11/emergency-sos-via-sat...
If I am getting this right, Apple and other device makers would have some kind of beacon registration for every single device it produces with the feature ?
https://9to5mac.com/2022/12/14/iphone-14-satellite-crash-det...
Which is a pretty neat capability all things considered.
Edit: googling my own question https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/a-virginia-company-h...
They are often off in the woods, though! Do some connect to satellites?
Edit: apparently satellite backhaul is a thing but kinda rare.
Latency for bouncing off LEO satellites isn't too bad though.
As a kid I grew up on 2600hz lore and the magic of the blue boxes, all of the witchcraft that went into making those insane switching infrastructures. How the world became so flat so fast is beyond my comprehension.
I was born a child without the Internet. We are now living in an age where the Internet is not only ubiquitous, but now increasingly omnipresent. We are dwelling in a saturation of signals the likes of which our ancestors could only dream of, but here we are today, in a world where we still have food crises, and individual autonomy conspiracies.
We have all of the signal, how do we cut through the noise?
I am excited by the helpers. The people who run towards the action and try to make a difference. The people who are working on healing the world.
Comms are the key to faster interactivity. I am delighted to see our species striving to have easier, faster, lower cost connectivity.
As ham, I am seeing this communication very very difficult: even if it's LoS, mobile communications require high bitrates.
https://www.ericsson.com/en/press-releases/2022/7/ericsson-q...
Also for the record, it's been previously mentioned that Starlink would equip an expandable 25 square meter antenna for this service. [1]
[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/forget-5g-wireless-s...
Also, Starlink seems to be using an order of magnitude more satellites: AST SpaceMobile is planning a 243-satellite constellation, while Starlink currently has 3000+ satellites operational.
Wow, I was unaware that Elon already brought that amount of equipment into space!
No longer having any places where you can't call for help will make things a lot safer.
I recon its like gps, not available in a tunnel and not very well indoors
You know, that's an excellent point...
I'm guessing (but not knowing!) -- that the farther a signal needs to be synched in space -- deep space for example -- the larger possible "time interval" / "time skew" / "time jitter" (for lack of better terminology, I am not a signal engineer!) -- between signal components!
Consider the following question in theoretical physics:
Let's suppose someone could choose a point in the universe, all the way across the universe (like let's suppose the universe is like a circle, and the point chosen is diametrically opposite to where you are now -- the farthest point opposite your own, on the circle's circumference.)
And let's suppose you could send a radio signal from this most far point in the universe -- and somehow receive it where you are now...
If you could -- then the $64,000 question is:
"What does that radio signal look like at the endpoint, once it has traversed all of that space?"
Because it probably has been transformed in some way, before it reaches its destination...
Maybe it has not only become phase shifted and/or time skewed -- in some way...
Perhaps that signal, by the time it reaches the longest point in the universe away from it -- has been completely Fourier Transformed...
If most of that signal at its point of origin was originally in the frequency domain (like most signals are) -- then perhaps that signal, in its journey over miles and miles of endless space -- is now mostly in the time domain...
Or, I'll go for "full crackpot" --
Perhaps what defines the largest possible distance between two points in space -- is the Fourier Transform of all signals present in one point in space/time -- Fourier transformed -- at another point in space/time...
(Or perhaps I should call space/time -- time/space -- its reciprocal/inverse ?)
But perhaps this is all wrong!
Perhaps the opposite to a point in space -- is all other points in Space!
Or, all other points in Time...
Well, whatever the case, it would be interesting to know what signal transformations are necessary to get a given signal the farthest to/from deep space...
At least for future, outside of our solar system, space missions...
Exactly the same, just much weaker.
The issue at play is just that light moves at a finite speed, and cell phones would rather assume the tower is dead (and switch to a closer tower) than wait a long time to get an answer. Not physics, just software.
As for crypto currencies, they seem irrelevant to this topic.
I give you $20, and I go to jail if I don't mark down the serial, and report it. Or, if I cannot account for where serial $x went to, after it was given to me.
All stores, etc have to do the same.
People would freak out if told to do this.
Yet this is precisely what is happening with debit/credit cards worldwide. This level of tracking is slowly begin kicked on everywhere.
For example, by law, the DHS in the US has access to all credit(and effectively debit, which uses the same clearing process) transactions.
The US just rolled over after 9/11, completely bizarre.
I literally don't get people.
Yeah, the floodgates of information into surveillance, they are just completely open and people are way past caring. It's just too much to understand. And like Snowden says, of all that "metadata", you don't need much of it to do the meaningful tracking you need.