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I don't know if this has been announced before: "Operators in our network have access to reciprocal global access that allows their users to access the service

I don't know if this has been announced before: "Operators in our network have access to reciprocal global access that allows their users to access the service when they travel to one of our partner countries." [1] It sounds like once SpaceX has partnered with at least one carrier in most countries then you'll be able to travel to almost any point on the surface of the Earth and still have baseline emergency cell texting coverage, the only requirement being a decent view of the sky. This is going to save lives. I hope they are also allowed to make it work in places without carriers, like international waters and Antarctica. [1] https://api.starlink.com/public-files/DIRECT_TO_CELL_FIRST_TEXT_UPDATE.pdf https://api.starlink.com/public-files/DIRECT_TO_CELL_FIRST_T...

extheat 3y ago
I assume this works like traditional cellular roaming, no? So this would mean you have to be a customer of one of the service providers to get reciprocated roaming capabilities abroad.
- modeless 3y ago
  Yes, you would need service with one of the partners to get roaming on all of them. Although on terrestrial networks in the US at least 911 service is supposed to work even on phones without any carrier plan. Maybe they can eventually work it out so that texting emergency services works on any phone anywhere globally even without service. That would be a great achievement for humanity.
  - 14 3y ago
    Yes it would be a fantastic achievement. I was saying in another comment what is your he movie industry going to do when there is no such thing as no service, a common theme used in almost every scary movie?
    - connicpu 3y ago
      Lead roof shingles?
      - fullspectrumdev 3y ago
        Not even joking, a place I was renting had dead spots due to this. I spent ages working out why the “older” part of the house had no cell coverage…
    - cwillu 3y ago
      Sunspots
    - ericcumbee 3y ago
      Dead battery
  - lxgr 3y ago
    I think that's only technically possible for voice 911 calls. Texting 911 requires you to be attached to a network, which in turn requires a phone plan and potentially a roaming agreement. Changing this would require some deep architectural changes to the 3GPP specs, or just allowing anyone on but filtering out all non-911 texts.
    - modeless 3y ago
      Interesting. I expect that SpaceX will start supporting voice calls with this system in the not too distant future, so maybe that will make it work automatically. Unless the telcos can get their act together before then and change their standards to support text-to-911 without a service agreement.
      - lxgr 3y ago
        That would be great, but in addition to network-side changes it would definitely require changes to existing baseband firmware as well – i.e. it's not happening for existing phones.
        eternityforest 3y ago
        Is the baseband firmware not updatable?
        modeless 3y ago
        Manufacturers have no incentive to update it with new features. Their incentive is to require you to buy a new phone to get those features even if the old hardware could theoretically support it.
        eternityforest 3y ago
        Google seems to be pretty happy to provide updates. If my phone lasts 8 years I'll be even more likely to buy another Pixel after that time. Especially when they are making money continually the whole time by selling everyone's data, even if you could keep the same phone for 20 years.
  - tjohns 3y ago
    Texting 911 via satellite usually involves a relay through a private monitoring company (like GEOS), who then places a voice call to local emergency departments on your behalf to activate SAR. With satellite based SOS, there's no guarantee that the local 911 can support texts, or even that there's an equivalent to 911 (think calling from Antarctica or the middle of the ocean). It's complicated and relatively expensive to coordinate - which means it's unlikely they can open this up for phones without a plan. (Compare with traditional cellular 911, which is all government funded.) The US Air Force RCC does this as a taxpayer-funded service for PLBs, but they don't support any private satellite services. Long-winded way of saying there's a lot that would need to change on the backend and funding model to make that work without being tied to a paid cellular plan.
    - mynameisnoone 3y ago
      Heck, I've been in places in California where E911 didn't work. One time, the 911 operator didn't have position information despite being then on Verizon with an iPhone. Verizon followed up that everything about their system worked, but it's that N municipal 911 operation centers must be correctly configured and tested to be interoperable x M carriers x P phones. My conclusion is there appears to be no effective oversight over all American 911 operation centers to ensure they continuously meet a minimum set of standards.
- joshspankit 3y ago
  If the tech is still what was announced, the satellite does the heavy lifting and the cell sees it as a bog-standard cell tower. That means the real answer to your question doesn’t have a single answer since it’s in the legal and contractual parts of the equation.
14 3y ago
I was just thinking the other day what is Hollywood going to do in the future with people lost movies that simply won’t be very reasonable for in most movies. For example I saw one the other day and they crashed a plane but people survived and they were trying to hold their phones up but couldn’t get a signal. Of course not or there would be no plot to the show they would just be rescued right away. With this new technology it will be pretty unlikely anyone will get lost and not have their phone which everyone carries on them. Our kids will watch movies of the past and think how stupid why would they not just call for help what is this no signal thing they are talking about. Much like when humans went from landline only to cellular phones this will be marked as another great milestone in human history.
- oskarkk 3y ago
  Phone can run out of battery and it can be easily destroyed or lost.
  - Isamu 3y ago
    Phone eaten by a bear
    - 14 3y ago
      That damn cocaine bear is at it again
  - 14 3y ago
    Sure but critics will say that is a poor plot in all but a few scenarios. Even seen here last week was the phone that fell out of the jet when the door ripped off and the phone was still on and in working order. So ya a movie plot could say the person was kidnapped when the battery died but no more lost plane crash movies or boats being lost at sea or people lost in the desert. And with the recent announcement of a nuclear battery the size of a watch battery that can last 28,000 years I imagine if they become commercial we will see those things adopted so no matter what you can always signal an emergency from your phone. Sure there will be some plausible movie work around but Hollywood will definitely need to become creative.
bonestamp2 3y ago
> I don't know if this has been announced before... When they announced the original deal with T-Mobile, they said that T-Mobile would handle the (spectrum) license for the US and they're looking for a partner in other countries with the appropriate spectrum licensing. US T-Mobile customers would have access to this SpaceX service in any country where there is a partner with the spectrum license. https://www.t-mobile.com/news/un-carrier/t-mobile-takes-coverage-above-and-beyond-with-spacex https://www.t-mobile.com/news/un-carrier/t-mobile-takes-cove... If you have an iPhone 14 or above, Apple offers similar capabilities to all iPhone users in about a dozen countries (so far) regardless of which mobile network you subscribe to at home. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213426 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213426
- modeless 3y ago
  I disagree that Apple's capability is similar. The feature only allows texting emergency services, requires holding the phone in a specific orientation to send or receive, is separate from your carrier service (only two years are free with purchase), and is exceedingly slow. SpaceX's service will allow texting and receiving texts from anyone using your carrier number, plans to support third party messaging apps such as WhatsApp, is much faster, and does not require holding the phone in any particular orientation to receive messages. It can supposedly work from a pocket or inside a car.
  - forgot-im-old 3y ago
    >> It can supposedly work from a pocket or inside a car. False
  - lxgr 3y ago
    Elon has mentioned a speed of about 7 Mbit/s for an entire cell (which in these systems usually means a circle with a radius of a few hundred kilometers). That's within an order of magnitude of current LEO systems. The innovation here is that it'll supposedly work with unmodified off-the-shelf phones. (Personally I'm assuming that at least messaging software will have to be modified in order to use the available bandwidth efficiently.)
Blahah 3y ago
Antarctica and international waters already have sat phone coverage. Don't think it'll save any lives in those places. Remote regions of populous countries with a long tail of sparse rural infrastructure maybe. Brazil, India, China.
- dave78 3y ago
  There are huge portions of the USA that have no cell coverage. Often the kinds of places that people go to hike and explore - and also places that people sometimes get injured. I'm sure that's true in many other countries as well. I know people who volunteer for search & rescue teams, and they all universally believe that this kind of thing definitely will save lives. The smart thing to do if you were going somewhere remote would be to have a sat phone. But, 1) they cost money, 2) we know there's a lot of people that don't think ahead or think that bad things will happen to them and 3) a lot of people are simply ignorant about the lack of cell coverage in these places, and just assume they'll be able to call for help if they need it. By the time they figure out that they were wrong about the coverage, they're too committed to turn around and go back.
  - tuatoru 3y ago
    > The smart thing to do if you were going somewhere remote would be to have a Personal locator beacon, PLB, on land; or an EPIRB, emergency position indicating radio beacon, on ocean. Satphones and cell phones are luxuries but these are vital. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_position-indicating_radiobeacon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_position-indicating_...
    - dave78 3y ago
      Yes, agreed. I was lumping them together in my head. I think my point still stands that people often get into trouble without cell coverage and without access to a locator or sat phone or whatever, but likely have their regular cell phone with them.
    - lxgr 3y ago
      These are more expensive than many current satellite messengers (including subscription fees for a few years!) and importantly don’t give you any feedback on whether your call has gone through (except for the newest ones using Galileo’s return channel) or way to communicate with the SAR team and specify the nature of your emergency.
paxys 3y ago
They have partnered with T-Mobile, and T-Mobile already has these deals in place. This is how TMo subscribers get global data coverage as part of their plan.
- lxgr 3y ago
  Basically every mobile network in the world has roaming deals in place. I don't think every roaming partner of T-Mobile will gain access this the Starlink-based service, though. It's probably going to be another tier of "Starlink roaming", only accessible to the subscribers of Starlink's respective local partner operators that are also lending their spectrum.
Sparkyte 3y ago
Here I wished Mint Mobile didn't get consumed by a giant. If they got their hands into this it would have made them a technical leader. I do hate how all telecommunications devolve into three or less monopolies price fixing. I go to any other country in the world and pay less for cell service. Then again the coverage needed for rural parts of the US probably make service hard.

extheat 3y ago

I assume this works like traditional cellular roaming, no? So this would mean you have to be a customer of one of the service providers to get reciprocated roaming capabilities abroad.

modeless 3y ago
Yes, you would need service with one of the partners to get roaming on all of them. Although on terrestrial networks in the US at least 911 service is supposed to work even on phones without any carrier plan. Maybe they can eventually work it out so that texting emergency services works on any phone anywhere globally even without service. That would be a great achievement for humanity.
- 14 3y ago
  Yes it would be a fantastic achievement. I was saying in another comment what is your he movie industry going to do when there is no such thing as no service, a common theme used in almost every scary movie?
  - connicpu 3y ago
    Lead roof shingles?
    - fullspectrumdev 3y ago
      Not even joking, a place I was renting had dead spots due to this. I spent ages working out why the “older” part of the house had no cell coverage…
  - cwillu 3y ago
    Sunspots
  - ericcumbee 3y ago
    Dead battery
- lxgr 3y ago
  I think that's only technically possible for voice 911 calls. Texting 911 requires you to be attached to a network, which in turn requires a phone plan and potentially a roaming agreement. Changing this would require some deep architectural changes to the 3GPP specs, or just allowing anyone on but filtering out all non-911 texts.
  - modeless 3y ago
    Interesting. I expect that SpaceX will start supporting voice calls with this system in the not too distant future, so maybe that will make it work automatically. Unless the telcos can get their act together before then and change their standards to support text-to-911 without a service agreement.
    - lxgr 3y ago
      That would be great, but in addition to network-side changes it would definitely require changes to existing baseband firmware as well – i.e. it's not happening for existing phones.
      - eternityforest 3y ago
        Is the baseband firmware not updatable?
        modeless 3y ago
        Manufacturers have no incentive to update it with new features. Their incentive is to require you to buy a new phone to get those features even if the old hardware could theoretically support it.
        eternityforest 3y ago
        Google seems to be pretty happy to provide updates. If my phone lasts 8 years I'll be even more likely to buy another Pixel after that time. Especially when they are making money continually the whole time by selling everyone's data, even if you could keep the same phone for 20 years.
- tjohns 3y ago
  Texting 911 via satellite usually involves a relay through a private monitoring company (like GEOS), who then places a voice call to local emergency departments on your behalf to activate SAR. With satellite based SOS, there's no guarantee that the local 911 can support texts, or even that there's an equivalent to 911 (think calling from Antarctica or the middle of the ocean). It's complicated and relatively expensive to coordinate - which means it's unlikely they can open this up for phones without a plan. (Compare with traditional cellular 911, which is all government funded.) The US Air Force RCC does this as a taxpayer-funded service for PLBs, but they don't support any private satellite services. Long-winded way of saying there's a lot that would need to change on the backend and funding model to make that work without being tied to a paid cellular plan.
  - mynameisnoone 3y ago
    Heck, I've been in places in California where E911 didn't work. One time, the 911 operator didn't have position information despite being then on Verizon with an iPhone. Verizon followed up that everything about their system worked, but it's that N municipal 911 operation centers must be correctly configured and tested to be interoperable x M carriers x P phones. My conclusion is there appears to be no effective oversight over all American 911 operation centers to ensure they continuously meet a minimum set of standards.
joshspankit 3y ago
If the tech is still what was announced, the satellite does the heavy lifting and the cell sees it as a bog-standard cell tower. That means the real answer to your question doesn’t have a single answer since it’s in the legal and contractual parts of the equation.

14 3y ago

I was just thinking the other day what is Hollywood going to do in the future with people lost movies that simply won’t be very reasonable for in most movies. For example I saw one the other day and they crashed a plane but people survived and they were trying to hold their phones up but couldn’t get a signal. Of course not or there would be no plot to the show they would just be rescued right away. With this new technology it will be pretty unlikely anyone will get lost and not have their phone which everyone carries on them. Our kids will watch movies of the past and think how stupid why would they not just call for help what is this no signal thing they are talking about. Much like when humans went from landline only to cellular phones this will be marked as another great milestone in human history.

oskarkk 3y ago
Phone can run out of battery and it can be easily destroyed or lost.
- Isamu 3y ago
  Phone eaten by a bear
  - 14 3y ago
    That damn cocaine bear is at it again
- 14 3y ago
  Sure but critics will say that is a poor plot in all but a few scenarios. Even seen here last week was the phone that fell out of the jet when the door ripped off and the phone was still on and in working order. So ya a movie plot could say the person was kidnapped when the battery died but no more lost plane crash movies or boats being lost at sea or people lost in the desert. And with the recent announcement of a nuclear battery the size of a watch battery that can last 28,000 years I imagine if they become commercial we will see those things adopted so no matter what you can always signal an emergency from your phone. Sure there will be some plausible movie work around but Hollywood will definitely need to become creative.

bonestamp2 3y ago

> I don't know if this has been announced before... When they announced the original deal with T-Mobile, they said that T-Mobile would handle the (spectrum) license for the US and they're looking for a partner in other countries with the appropriate spectrum licensing. US T-Mobile customers would have access to this SpaceX service in any country where there is a partner with the spectrum license. https://www.t-mobile.com/news/un-carrier/t-mobile-takes-coverage-above-and-beyond-with-spacex https://www.t-mobile.com/news/un-carrier/t-mobile-takes-cove... If you have an iPhone 14 or above, Apple offers similar capabilities to all iPhone users in about a dozen countries (so far) regardless of which mobile network you subscribe to at home. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213426 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213426

modeless 3y ago
I disagree that Apple's capability is similar. The feature only allows texting emergency services, requires holding the phone in a specific orientation to send or receive, is separate from your carrier service (only two years are free with purchase), and is exceedingly slow. SpaceX's service will allow texting and receiving texts from anyone using your carrier number, plans to support third party messaging apps such as WhatsApp, is much faster, and does not require holding the phone in any particular orientation to receive messages. It can supposedly work from a pocket or inside a car.
- forgot-im-old 3y ago
  >> It can supposedly work from a pocket or inside a car. False
- lxgr 3y ago
  Elon has mentioned a speed of about 7 Mbit/s for an entire cell (which in these systems usually means a circle with a radius of a few hundred kilometers). That's within an order of magnitude of current LEO systems. The innovation here is that it'll supposedly work with unmodified off-the-shelf phones. (Personally I'm assuming that at least messaging software will have to be modified in order to use the available bandwidth efficiently.)

Blahah 3y ago

Antarctica and international waters already have sat phone coverage. Don't think it'll save any lives in those places. Remote regions of populous countries with a long tail of sparse rural infrastructure maybe. Brazil, India, China.

dave78 3y ago
There are huge portions of the USA that have no cell coverage. Often the kinds of places that people go to hike and explore - and also places that people sometimes get injured. I'm sure that's true in many other countries as well. I know people who volunteer for search & rescue teams, and they all universally believe that this kind of thing definitely will save lives. The smart thing to do if you were going somewhere remote would be to have a sat phone. But, 1) they cost money, 2) we know there's a lot of people that don't think ahead or think that bad things will happen to them and 3) a lot of people are simply ignorant about the lack of cell coverage in these places, and just assume they'll be able to call for help if they need it. By the time they figure out that they were wrong about the coverage, they're too committed to turn around and go back.
- tuatoru 3y ago
  > The smart thing to do if you were going somewhere remote would be to have a Personal locator beacon, PLB, on land; or an EPIRB, emergency position indicating radio beacon, on ocean. Satphones and cell phones are luxuries but these are vital. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_position-indicating_radiobeacon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_position-indicating_...
  - dave78 3y ago
    Yes, agreed. I was lumping them together in my head. I think my point still stands that people often get into trouble without cell coverage and without access to a locator or sat phone or whatever, but likely have their regular cell phone with them.
  - lxgr 3y ago
    These are more expensive than many current satellite messengers (including subscription fees for a few years!) and importantly don’t give you any feedback on whether your call has gone through (except for the newest ones using Galileo’s return channel) or way to communicate with the SAR team and specify the nature of your emergency.

paxys 3y ago

They have partnered with T-Mobile, and T-Mobile already has these deals in place. This is how TMo subscribers get global data coverage as part of their plan.

lxgr 3y ago
Basically every mobile network in the world has roaming deals in place. I don't think every roaming partner of T-Mobile will gain access this the Starlink-based service, though. It's probably going to be another tier of "Starlink roaming", only accessible to the subscribers of Starlink's respective local partner operators that are also lending their spectrum.

Sparkyte 3y ago

Here I wished Mint Mobile didn't get consumed by a giant. If they got their hands into this it would have made them a technical leader. I do hate how all telecommunications devolve into three or less monopolies price fixing. I go to any other country in the world and pay less for cell service. Then again the coverage needed for rural parts of the US probably make service hard.