3 ms·
I've always assumed that there would be at least some modifications required on the phone firmware side. 5G (at least the non-NTN ,non-IoT variants) is just to
by lxgr 2y ago
I've always assumed that there would be at least some modifications required on the phone firmware side.
5G (at least the non-NTN ,non-IoT variants) is just too chatty to support cell sizes that big, is my suspicion. If you can get the phones to go into a special "texting only" mode (whether that's over IP using IMS, which also seems somewhat chatty, or something lower level and more efficient), that would probably help a lot, and I assume this is what Apple is doing in this firmware update.
- wkat4242 2y agoYeah I always wondered about that too. How do you stop it from sending too much and cluttering the entire area (media access control is another issue because the satellite will 'see' a much wider area than the phone). I imagine though that Starlink DTC will only be visible to phones in really remote areas, as it uses the same frequenties as terrestrial network it will be easily overwhelmed by traffic from nearby towers.
- lxgr 2y agoI'd expect them to use at least some amount of exclusive spectrum for this service, or there would be issues in fringe areas in at least the uplink (the satellite couldn't selectively tune out phones talking to terrestrial towers if they are using the same frequencies that phone-to-satellite comms are using).