T-Mobile teams up with StarLink to provide universal coverage everywhere.

This was from 2 years ago?
August 25, 2022

This will be awesome

Good. I recently switched to T-Mobile and have been unimpressed with their coverage.

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I told all my homies at work the first carrier to do this will either get absorbed by Starlink in the next 20 years or go on to be the dominant provider for Earth.

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ATT and Verizon missed the opportunity, or at least they are right now.

With Starlink and eventually Kuiper going up there, land based cellular will join the ranks of telephone poles.

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This honestly feels like it would fall under the category of "If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is".

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It’s text messaging only right now. “Afterwards, the companies plan to pursue the addition of voice and data coverage.”

From what I understand, SpaceX is installing traditional LTE radios on Starlink satellites. These direct-to-cell (DTC) satellites are in a lower orbit than normal Starlink satellites but they’re still something like 220 miles from your phone. The question will be how well they’re able to maintain connection with a cell phone 220 miles away using LTE.

To me it sounds like this is really a Starlink development, more than T-Mobile. T-Mobile has a one-year exclusivity agreement but Starlink is still launching/testing their DTC satellites. If it works, I would imagine SpaceX/Starlink will open it up to other carriers unless T-Mobile pays a pretty penny for continued exclusivity.

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I recently switched to T-Mobile and have been unimpressed with their coverage.

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Quite honestly, my coverage was better when it was Sprint.

This was announced over 2 years ago and there have been no further developments that I have seen.

I had the T-Mobile home internet for a trial run. It worked great until my wife, my daughter and myself all needed to use Teams video conferencing at the same time, then it struggled a bit. We all have days we work from home.

I have gigabit fiber, though, and it blows away the 5G internet service. I tried the T-Mobile service to see if it could replace the fiber since the fiber service is $35 more per month. It almost could.

Doesn’t Apple already have something similar for messaging with iPhones 14 and above and it uses the Globalstar network?

Regardless of the tech, once satellite data is possible with 2-3 Mbps of connectivity, I will buy otherwise I will keep my current phone which is an iPhone 13 and doesn’t have the fancy SOS emergency satellite texting.