Starlink has just staged its first successful text-via-satellite trial, involving messages sent via two stock-standard iPhones. Photo / SpaceX
It was a bit behind its original timetable, but Starlink staged the first test of its “cell tower in the sky” service earlier this week.
Two unmodified iPhones at SpaceX’s headquarters in Redmond Washington - each on T-Mobile’s network - swapped a series of messages relayed by Starlink satellites, including “Never had such signal” and “Much wow”.
Starlink (a division of the Elon Musk-owned SpaceX, is aiming for a commercial launch of its mobile service by the end of this year - in partnership with a half-dozen telcos around the world, including One NZ here, initially for text messaging.
One NZ spokesman Matthew Flood told the Herald local testing would begin from mid-year.
The idea is that satellite connections can be used to fill mobile blackspots, or gaps caused by natural disasters such as Cyclone Gabrielle. Satellite calling is old hat - but new technologies, and the development of low-Earth orbit satellites that swoop just 600km above, mean brick-sized satellite phones will no longer be necessary. Any stock-standard mobile phone with a technology called LTE (which features in even the cheapest models today) will be able to connect to a 5G signal sent or received via satellite.
This will allow for mobile phone connectivity anywhere on Earth.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 3, 2024
Note, this only supports ~7Mb per beam and the beams are very big, so while this is a great solution for locations with no cellular connectivity, it is not meaningfully competitive with existing terrestrial… https://t.co/ymHpw8XBHl
2degrees and Spark have gone with Lynk, a US startup that’s challenging Starlink. Lynk has already staged successful voice call and text via satellite tests with 2degrees and Spark - and in December 2degrees even announced a limited customer trial in Nelson.
One NZ insiders pooh-pooh Lynk, pointing out it only has three satellites in low-Earth orbit, pointing out that Lynk only has three satellites in orbit (even if it is aiming for 50 by the end of next year, 300 by the end of 2026 and 5110 by 2028, with propulsion systems from NZ’s Dawn Aerospace.)
That means that, for now, customers on 2degrees’ Nelson trial can only send a text via satellite at three points during the day, each a window of only a few minutes when one of Lynk’s satellites is overhead. The telco has been open about the limitations. Like Spark, it says it wants to experiment with an exciting new technology - but warns against it being overhyped in its infancy.
But here’s the rub: While Starlnk has about 5000 satellites in orbit - which tens of thousands of Kiwis now use for rural broadband via a dish on their roof - none of them have been mobile-service capable.
That changed last week, when Starlink launched its first six mobile-capable satellites on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket (which carried a total of 21 Starlink birds). That was followed just six days later by the successful text trial in the US.
Musk was uncharacteristically low-key about the test text, posting to X: “Note, this only supports ~7Mb per beam [that is, more like sub-3G speed than 5G] and the beams are very big, so while this is a great solution for locations with no cellular connectivity, it is not meaningfully competitive with existing terrestrial cellular networks.”
That puny bandwidth makes it seem a stretch for voice and especially data to be added to Starlink’s mobile service by the 2025 target.
Texts between two phones sent through our Direct to Cell satellites in space pic.twitter.com/jd8b7uiZSq
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) January 11, 2024
When Starlink’s mobile service was first announced, in August 2022, a beta service was promised by the end of 2023. Now, the first target is a commercial text-via-satellite service by the end of this year.
In the meantime, One NZ has changed its original Starlink partnership slogan from “100 per cent mobile coverage” to “Coverage like never before, launching 2024″ (the change coincided with a stop order from the Commerce Commission, related to the original campaign. The telco said the switch was always planned.)
A delaying factor has been that it was first envisaged that Starlink’s new generation direct-to-mobile capable satellites - whose original design was too big for the Falcon 9 - would be launched on Space X’s larger Starship which, in the event, has yet to stage a successful test launch.
Musk will no doubt get there with larger Starlink satellites that offer more mobile bandwidth.
But the tyranny of distance - even if it’s only about 600km - means there will always be some lag and other performance limitations with mobile via satellite. That, combined with their ownership of local spectrum, means One NZ and other telcos don’t have to worry about Elon eating their lunch.
Meanwhile Lynk - which earlier raised US$35m in venture capital - announced in December that it was merging with Slam Corp, a blank cheque investment vehicle or Spac (special-purpose acquisition corporation) founded by former US professional baseball player Alex Rodriguez, aka “A-Rod”.
In a statement, the two firms said they plan to list their merged entity on the Nasdaq by the end of 2024, with a valuation of “no less than US$800m” ($1.6 billion).
Slam raised US$575m in February 2021, but Space News reported on December 28 that investors had withdrawn US$176m ahead of the Lynk merger.
Amazon’s Project Kuiper will taken on Elon Musk’s SpaceX with thousands of low Earth orbit satellites for broadband anywhere. AWS CEO Adam Selipsky says two prototype satellites launched last month are performing well. Consumer + dedicated enterprise Internet, with first customer… pic.twitter.com/KIrdLvAV1S
— Chris Keall (@ChrisKeall) November 28, 2023
More competition is coming. At the recent re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, AWS (Amazon Web Services) chief executive Adam Selipsky said Amazon had just launched two prototype satellites for its putative Starlink rival, Project Kuiper. Consumer trials are expected in the second half of next year.
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.