Satellite Cell Service

T-Mobile and Starlink made a joint announcement recently about an arrangement where Starlink will enable voice and texting capabilities to T-Mobile cellphones by the end of 2023. Elon Musk touted this as being able to reach people lost in the wilderness, but the much bigger use will be to fill in cellular coverage in rural areas for T-Mobile. While the two companies made a big splashy announcement about the arrangement, they are late to the game as other industry players already have similar plans underway. Companies such as AST SpaceMobile, Lynx, and Globalstar have already been working to deploy cellular satellites. All of these plans raise a lot of questions that we won’t get answered until somebody has a working satellite product. For example, could somebody inside a vehicle connect to a satellite?  This is a much-needed service for a lot of people—specifically those in rural areas where 30% or more rural homes have no cellular coverage and the many parts of the world where modern cellular towers are a rarity.