I wonder if this service will facilitate collapse of censorship in dictatorship countries like China and Russia. Especially if those countries are currently suffering from economic depression like China and Russia, and its citizens are waking up to its harsh realities and are keen to get unfiltered information
Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service
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Re: Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service
#12Skimming the article I couldn’t find which phone models they tested with. Any ideas?
Judging by the photos they posted on Twitter, looks like some semi-recent iPhones (definitely not 14 Pros or 15s because of the notch). [1]
Re: Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
It specifically was unspecified. [This Comment Intentionally Left Blank]
Why would that be? > with regular unmodified Smartphones Why are they being so cagey?
So that when operational service is announced by their partners, they have a meaningful announcement that will get worthwhile press attention.
e.g. T-Mobile and Samsung might trot this out together (to counter Apple's announcement of emergency text for help by different means). It'll work better than if all the keywords have already occurred in media articles; it'll work especially better if they were testing on weird/old development phones or phones from different vendors than their chosen highlighted partners.
Basically there's no upside in disclosing equipment, and there's a lot of ways it can be unfortunate.
Re: Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service
#14I wonder if this service will facilitate collapse of censorship in dictatorship countries like China and Russia. Especially if those countries are currently suffering from economic depression like China and Russia, and its citizens are waking up to its harsh realities and are keen to get unfiltered information
Not if Musk has anything to say about it.
Re: Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service
#15I feel like this will eventually kill dedicated sat phones, which are (a) horribly expensive, both for the gear and subscription plans, and (b) still not very reliable.
I feel like if Starlink is able to provide reliable SMS-only service at a reasonable price, it would kill like 95% of dedicated sat phone use cases, which would then make the other 5% economically unviable.
Re: Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service
#16Skimming the article I couldn’t find which phone models they tested with. Any ideas?
[deleted]
Re: Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service
#17I feel like this will eventually kill dedicated sat phones, which are (a) horribly expensive, both for the gear and subscription plans, and (b) still not very reliable. I feel like if Starlink is able to provide reliable SMS-only service at a reasonable price, it would kill like 95% of dedicated sat phone use cases, which would then make the other 5% economically unviable.
Current iPhones can sort of do that with existing sat phone networks.
I agree those networks are basically obsolete at this point, especially since there will probably be a second operational LEO network to compete with starlink in the next ten years.
Re: Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
+1, sign me up, like a Star Trek communicator with global coverage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicator_(Star_Trek)
The future is now. Soon, in the middle of the Pacific ocean: You're package has been deliverred. Visit scam-post-gov-us.com/package19474
“We shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them on the oceans.”
Re: Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service
#19I wonder if this service will facilitate collapse of censorship in dictatorship countries like China and Russia. Especially if those countries are currently suffering from economic depression like China and Russia, and its citizens are waking up to its harsh realities and are keen to get unfiltered information
If you are a country like China that wants to prevent this from being possible how would they go about it? Can these satellites provide communication between phones without a terrestrial cell network sitting in the middle?
Re: Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service
#20I wonder if this service will facilitate collapse of censorship in dictatorship countries like China and Russia. Especially if those countries are currently suffering from economic depression like China and Russia, and its citizens are waking up to its harsh realities and are keen to get unfiltered information
I feel like the whole dream of "free internet will bring freedom and democracy to the whole world" died a decade ago if not earlier. All of those states had completely free and unrestricted access to the internet not that far back and it didn't really lead to anything groundbreaking - introducing satellite telephony to the common market is not going to do it. And you can bet that if the service is offered in China/Russia it will be forced to go through local servers to operate legally.