T-Mobile said on Sunday it will launch its satellite-to-cell service, powered by Elon Musk’s SpaceX’s Starlink, in July for $15 a month, as the U.S. wireless carrier works to eliminate mobile dead zones and extend connectivity to remote areas.
Reuters:
T-Mobile said 500,000 square miles of the U.S., which is unreachable by terrestrial cell towers, can now stay connected.
The carrier began a wide-scale beta trial of the service on Sunday. The company will provide the service free for customers till its launch, after which it will be included in the carrier’s premium Go5G Next plan at no extra cost.
For other plans, customers who sign up for the trial will get a 33% discount when the service is commercially launched, the wireless carrier said.
The beta launch will offer text service via satellite, while voice and data features will be added later, the company announced during the Super Bowl game on Sunday.
“This is something that nobody else in the U.S. has done, and one of the big distinctive things this network has is that it works across almost all smartphones from the last four years,” Mike Katz, president of marketing, strategy and products, told Reuters.
T-Mobile has been working closely with Apple and Alphabet’s Google to “ensure that this experience is integrated directly into their OS, and this will be the default satellite system across both of those phones,” Katz said.
MacDailyNews Take: Importantly, the T-Mobile Starlink service will be available directly to all wireless users, including AT&T and Verizon customers, without having to switch to T-Mobile. More info here.
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I do NOT want Elon Musk anywhere near my IPhone or other Apple products!
Yeah, saving money and preventing misuse of tax money is simply an overreach and dangerous. I hope he makes the recommendation to collude a little and prevent a thorough exchange of information…for our own good of course. I kind of miss the way the other people colluded with businesses and their efforts to create the Disinformation Governance Board gave me a nice 1984 censorship feeling.
Text yes. Typical 4G/5G voice quality? Typical 5G data speeds? No way.
I do link analyses for a living. I was the technical expert on getting 600+ Mbps links through Starlink’s first two experimental satellites. Satellite link analyses are my thing. A typical Starlink satellite even directly overhead is about 80 times (or more) farther away than the cell tower with which you get one bar. So that signal to and from the satellite is 6,400 times weaker. That’s 38 dB weaker, which is huge. When the Starlink satellite is not directly overhead it’s even worse.
Very narrow band (moderate quality) voice may be possible eventually, but the high quality 5G voice and high 5G data rates to your cell phone through a Starlink satellite is out of the question with current and near term technologies — no matter what the marketing hype says.