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And your regular cell tower is within a few miles of your mobile at most. A few hundred meters in most cases. The phone is transmitting a few watts tops. I am very skeptical of them promising anything other than very-very low bandwith data, but I would love to hear from someone who actually knows about this stuff.

I make voice contacts with folks via the ISS repeater using a 5W radio and an omnidirectional antenna. It's much easier if you have an antenna with better directional gain, but it's definitely possible.

I'm assuming the Starlink satellites have higher gain antennas than the ISS's amateur radio setup, and they definitely have better coverage than the single space station. :)

At first I was skeptical that other satellite phone companies would use geosynchronous satellites but I looked up https://www.inmarsat.com/en/about/technology/satellites.html and sure enough they do

Still, you're going to require a bit of energy to push your radio signal even 340 miles through the atmosphere...

(power)

Since the announcement mentions "existing LTE phones" it seems to be no problem, power wise.

So, it all depends on the satellites antenna.