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unmodified LTE and 5G seem way too verbose to be able to handle the constraints of a much higher number of devices per base station

That's a matter of pricing, isn't it?

Also, won't this primarily be used where very few people roam? Otherwise they could just use the regular land-based LTE infra.

Remember: SpaceX can't just magically offer cheaper mobile coverage globally; they don't own any rights to use 4G/5G frequency bands. These are typically very expensive.

It makes a lot of sense for SpaceX to partner with mobile operators who own these rights but don't utilize them very well in sparsely inhabited areas.

> That's a matter of pricing, isn't it?

Not necessarily: Users don't pay for signalling traffic.

I could imagine even just rejecting attachment requests of thousands of roaming clients could easily saturate a single satellite cell. Existing mobile-to-satellite protocols are much more optimized in that regard (and limited in that there are simply not that many clients out there looking for signal).

Couldn't each sat easily/cheaply ignore clients whose IDs are not in a whitelist?

And again, wouldn't this primarily be activated in very desolate areas?

Sure, but ignoring doesn't solve the problem of signalling channel saturation – if there is something to ignore, it means that some scarce resource has already been consumed.

That's fine if you need to tell a few terrestrial clients to go away every few minutes or so (until they finally give up until the next reboot or so), but I could imagine it being much more tricky when you're talking about cell sizes with a diameter of hundreds of kilometers.

> wouldn't this primarily be activated in very desolate areas?

It would be enabled globally (to fill in coverage gaps etc), I'd assume – and even in very remote areas, you might easily have a sizeable number of devices per square kilometer. A typical cell size (for Iridum, as an example) is 250 miles of diameter – that's the area of New York state! And that's not even considering overlaps of remote and densely populated areas.

To summarize (please correct me if I'm wrong here):

You see this being deployed to service every customer of the partnering mobile networks, wherever they may be.

I see this being deployed to service those customers who aren't covered by existing and much cheaper land-based LTE-coverage from the partnering mobile networks.

My concern is really of a more technical nature: 2G-5G are somewhat "chatty" on their signalling channels, as far as I understand.

Even when a given network does not support your operator/SIM card, your device will attempt to connect to it at least once (and hopefully cache the resulting rejection permanently and not keep trying in a loop).

But in case your device does support the satellite-based service (e.g. as a T-Mobile customer in the US), it would then attach to the satellite network if no terrestrial service is available and send periodic location updates etc.

That's normally not a problem, since cell sizes on earth are limited (either by geometry/physics or intentionally by network capacity planning), and by extension also the ratio of signalling chatter per cell.

I'm just not sure if unmodified LTE clients can be convinced to be less chatty only from the network side.

Why wouldn't it use or support plain SMS? The satellites are emulating cell towers to be able to talk to existing modems in existing phones, and SMS is one of the most barebones things you get "for free" when you have a functioning connection before voice or data are even on the table.

Yes, but only using terrestrial applications.

The link budget, latency, and number of devices per cell/spot beam are significantly different for satellite applications and have so far required adapted protocols.

These are all not huge adaptations, and the hardware (antennas, LNAs, power amplifiers etc) of modern phones are definitely capable of it, but this entire endeavour is so much easier if you can just slightly adapt the cell phone side of things as well.

5G has made these adaptations (for both NB-IoT and "regular" 5G, i.e. NR); I'm just somewhat doubtful Starlink will be able to deliver the same for completely unmodified 4G/LTE.

What about nb-iot ? Isn't it a part of LTE(-M) and the 5G set of standards ?

They do mention « eNodeB » on the page, so, that's LTE.

It is, and I assume that that' what they'll end up using.

So they might end up technically meeting their target of "unmodified current devices" being able to use this, given that Samsung announced they'll be integrating 5G NTN IoT into some of their devices – but I highly doubt it would work with regular old (broadband) LTE or 5G phones.

Why are they able to offer internet connections profitably but wouldn’t be able to offer cell phone service?

They have only given phones a free two year contract. I don’t recall anywhere the price afterwards ?

They haven't announced one. My guess is that they're in the middle of complicated negotiations with cell operators at this point.

They certainly seem to have big ambitions for this project – they've supposedly secured 85% of Globalstar's bandwidth [1], and I doubt that calling for ambulances or tow trucks, or users sharing their location manually (once per 15 minutes at monst) requires that much.

My guess is that iMessage over satellite will become part of some of their higher-tier iCloud plans, in line with Apple's "services" ambitions and as a way to test the waters of providing network access directly.

[1] https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/09/09/apple-taking-85-o...

This thread is about Starlink but your comment is about Apple/Globalstar which is a completely different and incompatible system.

GP is (I believe) replying to an iPhone-specific remark in my original comment.

I've brought up Apple/Globalstar because it serves as a baseline for what's already possible, as well as it being a likely future competitor.

And I wouldn't read too much into (in)compatibility at this point: Neither Starlink nor Apple have disclosed how their respective solutions actually work. Starlink might function as a "dumb pipe" analog frequency-shifting relay just like Globalstar.