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Existing smartphones will connect with new satellite constellations in 2023

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Re: Existing smartphones will connect with new satellite constellations in 2023

#111
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide details of the order cancellation? That’s a new one. Wasn’t the car telemetry only published because it went to court? Why are you upset with Musk when someone tries to defraud Tesla and they prove them wrong with data? No one else’s telemetry has been published. Meanwhile Uber have “god-mode” and can track every driver globally in realtime… and it was abused to stalk people. SpaceX donated starlinks…

Musk runs his businesses like a dictator. Well, OK, it's no secret multi billion companies is not where socialists go to hide. But he can't have it both ways: if he chooses to run his companies this way, he can't complain we pin the bad stuff on him. He is not only responsible, also clearly involved in making those choices and decisions.

I think part of my point is: In the context of each of his businesses, there isn’t really much bad stuff, in fact his businesses are much better across most metrics than his competitors.

Twitter might be the exception here because its early days.

Re: Existing smartphones will connect with new satellite constellations in 2023

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone know what codec they're using at 2kbps per voice call?

AMR_SID claims to be 1.8kbps[1], but I can't imagine it sounds very good. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_code...

Hopefully it sounds better than AMBE2+, codec2 and whatever 1st gen Iridium was using at 2400baud.

Re: Existing smartphones will connect with new satellite constellations in 2023

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? My wifi barely reaches the other side of my room with a wall in between, how am I supposed to think 350 miles is within reason? Even with clear sky, your signal to a tower an order of magnitude closer would be unusable. If you look at apple’s latest feature, even them, with specific hardware probably, requires minutes of open-sky pointing directly at the closest satellite, to transmit mere bytes of data. That t…

Globalstar's network is LEO, but it's sparser (a couple dozen satellites) and about three times further away from earth.

it also uses a special antenna only in new iPhones that T-Mobile doesn't have the luxury of

Re: Existing smartphones will connect with new satellite constellations in 2023

#114
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's solution is making use of special features in the radio package. The post states unmodified phones.

Still, the fact that Apple has figured out the weird RF voodoo already makes it seem like a less ridiculous proposition.

it's not rf voodoo. it's a highly spread signal at an extremely low nitrate. this has been common for communications satellites for a very long time.

Re: Existing smartphones will connect with new satellite constellations in 2023

#115
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not exactly "satellite network", it's piggy-backing on an existing SAR reception infrastructure that used to require somewhat expensive dedicated devices. Not sure it's a good idea, I'd expect a wave of SAR requests for not real emergencies.

If this story is accurate, the integration with the iPhone's existing crash detection has already been used in a rescue: https://9to5mac.com/2022/12/14/iphone-14-satellite-crash-det... Which is a pretty neat capability all things considered.

it has also falsely reported accidents numerous times

Re: Existing smartphones will connect with new satellite constellations in 2023

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are, but I think the idea here is “the more the merrier”.

I wouldn't go that far. Rather I'd say that it opens up the risks and abuses to a much wider audience. I think the fact that there is no open source baseband firmware or open hardware for the GSM/LTE stack makes it even worse. There is no escape valve for consumers to exercise control over their privacy, and the technology doesn't care about regulatory boundaries, not that _any_ countries government actually wants th…

Currently Osmocombb can be considered a fully open source and audittable GSM stack, down to the baseband and modem firmware. Too bad it does not fit the phone completely.

FreeCalypso does and is audittable, but it's licencing situation is murky at best. It's based on leaked Texas Instruments sources with a gpl licence stuck on top. But Calypso is essentially abandonware and TI got out of the GSM modem biz in early 2000's so they apparently don't care.

For LTE there's srsUE from Software Radio Systems, but it's a 100% SDR implementation that does not fot any phone and is more of a lab and research tool. But it is open and audittable.

Re: Existing smartphones will connect with new satellite constellations in 2023

#117

This sounds to me like a single, global, commercial IMSI catcher that can track international movement of cell phones.. I guess the question is how good their triangulation will be, but I imagine the back-end data market for this will be fairly lucrative for them. And they don't really need any countries permission to _listen_ from space... .. .

That’s old sigint tech at this point.

Yep, and the modern day thing seems to be buying or hacking the movememt data directly from the telco. For example if leaks are to be believed NSA has access to around 70% of the movement data of GSM subscribers in Pakistan.

That said, there has been a sigint sat parked close below Thurayas sat for ages.

Re: Existing smartphones will connect with new satellite constellations in 2023

#118

How is the Chinese government going to control the flow of information in China once all phones do this and traffic need not leave the Starlink network to allow communication between endpoints?

How are governments going to collect taxes once people use crypto across this for thier transactions?

Re: Existing smartphones will connect with new satellite constellations in 2023

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Globalstar ... edit to add more detail: given Musk's history of unilaterally cancelling some individual's tesla orders, publishing car telemetry to dispute autopilot crash news stories, deciding when, how, and where Ukraine can use Starlink, and now plenty more examples of banning / censoring / downranking people as he sees fit on twitter, I'd prefer not to use a service he provides if i can get comparable capabiliti…

Can you provide details of the order cancellation? That’s a new one. Wasn’t the car telemetry only published because it went to court? Why are you upset with Musk when someone tries to defraud Tesla and they prove them wrong with data? No one else’s telemetry has been published. Meanwhile Uber have “god-mode” and can track every driver globally in realtime… and it was abused to stalk people. SpaceX donated starlinks…

Just giving you some more info on that order cancellation, it's been a few years but from what I remember, a blogger/columnist complained pretty strongly about something that I can't remember like build quality and I think he did it in a way that bothered elon personally so he had the columnist's order cancelled.

Just found the post: https://medium.com/@salsop/banned-by-tesla-8d1f3249b9fb

Re: Existing smartphones will connect with new satellite constellations in 2023

#120

SpaceX and T-Mobile are starting a trial in late-2023 to use unmodified handsets for text (and later, voice and data) with the Starlink V2 network to remove cell coverage dead-zones. [1] [2] It's achieved by "dedicating a slice of T-Mobile's Mid-Band PCS [1.9 GHz] spectrum, to be integrated into Starlink satellites, launched next year", with each Starlink V2 satellite hosting two 5-6 meter long cell-spectrum antennas…

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