Satellite phone tech coming to your mobe this year – but who pays for it? This year will be Ground Zero for the commercialization of satellite smartphone services, but a key question is whether operators will charge extra for this capability or include it as part of customer subscriptions. A report by mobile industry analyst GSMA Intelligence says that the monetization of satellite services may …
My 2p...
Those networks that roll it out "as standard", part of their packages, what they'll find is that it largely goes unused. There will be sporadic, occassional use, or very concentrated use (such as in those Pacific islands mentioned in the article, where I'm guessing cell, WiFi and broadband coverage is a bit thinner). Then they'll wonder why they're paying for it if no one is using it, and stop providing it.
Those networks that have it as a paid add-on are likely to find an initial flurry, and then they too notice that punters aren't buying it. But, at least they're not losing money on the deal.
The problem with all this kind of thing for retail mobile telephony is that, having spent so much time building out huge networks of cellular coverage, and with most punters also having access to broadband or WiFi at home, work, in some cities, on trains, buses, and planes, there's comparatively little call for retail satellite mobile services. And if the tech allows them to start offering fat broadband pipes in preference to cellular coverage, it'll cost quite a lot of money and will probably flatten phone batteries pretty rapidly, and won't work indoors anyway (which is where a lot of people in air-conditioned countries spend their time anyway, along with a WiFi hotspot). No one in their daily lives wants to have to sign up to each and every WiFi service in whatever buildings they're walking into, simply to get coverage. Cellular service coverage inside buildings is a major aspect of its service provision, and also the reason why the original networks are focused on the 900MHz band which is the ideal compromise for mobile antenna size and good penetration of structures.
Things may change, of course, but I strongly doubt it.
Totally agree, it's a service that has some appeal to me, but I live in one of the areas of the world that doesn't have continuous cell tower coverage. I actually DO pay about $20/mo for a Garmin InReach messenger, and I used a SPOT previous... so while I have rigorous questions about the reliability of a cell phone-based service, I would actually pay something to not have to carry a second device with me when I'm out and about roaming off the grid. As such... these services are probably a bad thing for Garmin and the existing satellite operators for small messaging services (Inmarsat, Iridium), but probably not going to be that widely used generally.
Perhaps...
What we might see is that they roll it out, barely anyone uses it... and then they pretty much cease any maintenance of ground based networks. After all, why keep up the expensive hardware on the ground when you've got expensive hardware in the sky? Then all the ground networks start to be flakey, and people will naturally migrate to the more expensive - more reliable - satellite system.
And then instead of three or four operators and a lot of redundancy, we end up with one or two operators and a network almost wholly owned by a foreign nation we can't trust in times of conflict. (I know, that last bit sounds so unrealistic...).
why keep up the expensive hardware on the ground when you've got expensive hardware in the sky
Because the hardware on the ground can provide way more bandwidth per buck than that in the sky. It makes much more economic sense for SkyNet (I'll be back) to provide the fill-in for blackspots rather than having it handle the whole load. It would be very expensive to provide the entire mobile bandwidth from LEO, not to mention resulting in so many satellites buzzing around that it would end up like a neutron cascade if any of them got clipped. (Think 'Gravity' but a realistic version.)
I could run my entire network connection via an LTE/5G modem but it's much cheaper to have a FTTP or VDSL connection and WiFi at home and just use radio when on the move. Similar physics.
My 2p...
I remember when the phoneboxes started taking 2p coins. It is remarkable how quickly we've gone from being prepared to walk to the end of the street and queue in the rain to make a telephone call to expecting instant connectivity wherever we happen to be.
Yes, gone are the wonderful olden days, when all your mates moved to universities around the country, or even abroad and that was pretty much the last time you saw them on a regular basis.
Oh I miss the good old days of trying to call someone for hour after hour only to be getting an engaged tone, because a hundred other people were trying to call from the same phone box.
Oh 'eck. Two pence piece payphones. Push button A to connect, eh?
I used to design some of the original digital electronic on-the-roll/freefall coin validators (and the payphones into which they were fitted) but I still love the old electro-mechanical ones.
I also think Strowger subscriber trunk dialling racks were way cooler than System X and similar all electronic stuff.
They just sounded way cooler!
(See the icon.)
I don't agree. It will get used anywhere you don't have a signal at present, even if you aren't actively using the phone; and places with no phone signal definitely exist.
The pricing side of things is going to be interesting. On the one hand, satellites are expensive and need to be paid for. On the other hand, I wouldn't pay extra for it, but given a choice between two otherwise identical plans, I would choose the one with satellite coverage.
It's effectively a law of comms that - if there's enough people with enough money to be worth supplying communications to in any area, there'll already be a 4G/5G base station there. What's left over has a very low market dollars per square mile on which to found a satellite network. There are distortions to that of course, and the US is a good example of where odd market conditions have meant that there's precious little competition (and thus massive underinvestment) in terrestrial comm for areas where there's a reasonably high concentration of money on the ground.
The pricing is indeed going to be interesting. Though depending on exactly what the technical solution ends up being, the two otherwise "identical" plans probably aren't in some detail that truly matters. Suppose it becomes possible to supply high-rate data connections from satellites to mobile phones, and the same in reverse. The temptation for the vendor would then be to provide that in preference to cellular coverage. Rather than maintain those costly base stations, just dispose of them as and when, the satellite coverage will fill the gap just nicely. However, transmissions to a satellite from a phone will always require more engergy than the same amount of data sent to a cell tower just down the road. Your battery would go flat faster. It doesn't matter if your primarily downloading; those IP packets won't ACK themselves...
I think that - as a low data rate, SMS-style service - it makes a lot of sense. Emergency messages can be life savers. But, as part of an emergency service, that's not really something for competitive, profit-motivated market dynamics.
Lots of places with no signal where I live. They're the places where something inevitably goes wrong, breakdown, puncture etc and you have to find a hill to make a call. I suppose better than the old days when it would've involved a 10 mile walk to find a phone box or banging on someone's lone farmhouse door to be greeted with that; "you're not from round these parts are you?" suspicious look. No, I'm from the village 15 miles away but speak funny because I grew up somewhere else!
Broadly the same pattern followed with data and messaging.
From memory, my first SMS exchanges were "free", basically the phones exploiting the messaging capability that existed in the networks that the telcos hadn't really monetised.
Then BT Genie (O2 eventually?) launched an "all you can eat" SMS package around 2001/2002. So as a skint student, we leapt on that offer - until they realised just how much we'd use it rather than phone calls. I got a haughty email from them informing me that 3000 messages in a month was too many, and I'd be capped.
Similarly with data. Realised early on that I could use irda to link my old Nokia to a laptop and get very slow (but not hugely compared to dial-up, probably 14kbps compared to 50kpbs you'd get on a landline at the time?) internet access on the go and at home. Again, that worked for a while before they monetised it. Then offered all you can eat data plans. Then created caps once they realised just how much some people would use (probably around the Limewire/Kazaa/Morpheus/AudioGalaxy days - as I understand it anyway). And there we've stayed.
They all like boasting what %age of the country that they cover. Building towers where there is little population is not something that they like to do: reference a friend of mine who lives in the middle of no-where in Wales.
It might be cheaper for them to swallow the cost of satellite service and be able to claim 100% coverage than to build & maintain towers that will be little used.
And here in the poor old USofA there are large areas that aren't reached by cell service and the states have "committed" to 100% broadband access by 20xx. Local communities (speaking of Vermont) are pretty vehement about not allowing new cell towers. This may allow the states to say they have fulfilled their commitments by just showing that it is available via these cell-phone satellite capabilities.
Here in NZ (and most other "western" nations, the telcos have sold off their terrestrial tower networks to a third party. There might a perverse incentive not to expand terrestrial coverage any further as it might cost them more than expanding their networks by more cell towers in space. Interesting times ahead.
Aren't the UK companies trying to use satellite to "fill in" the rural areas where they are required to provide service but don't?
If they do, then I'm not going to pay again* for the service that I am already paying for.
* that's actually "again again", as I already pay for broadband to use the "services" they charge me for over WiFi calling when I am at home (where there is no coverage).
Well you will insist on having a house with walls :-P
Satellite signals don't like walls (or roofs) either, so probably not going to help much in this scenario.
To be fair, the mobile operator are providing your SIP service.
Buying that directly for a consumer landline costs ~£10pcm plus calls, so if your mobile bill is less than that you're winning.
The vast majority of phone users are in cities so that's the low-hanging fruit for telcos. The added expense of satellites to serve that market would be silly. The people far out of the way become more and more expensive to serve as they move away from terrestrial infrastructure.
I go places where I don't have service and it doesn't bother me. I don't need reminders that my auto warranty is about to expire in real time. I've also trained most people that if they don't leave a message when they get voice mail, they didn't call. Just had one yesterday selling a thing on Craigslist but they didn't want to give me a phone number so I could coordinate with them to meet up. They say they tried to call me, but I expect they blocked their number which won't ring through to my phone and I had told them that. Oh well, I can spend my money elsewhere. It was a good deal, but I find those often enough and I didn't need the thing right away, but was going to be in the area.
"But you're visiting those places, not living there."
If I were ever to move house again, cell service and wired internet (cable/fibre) would be big requirements. The work I do and lifestyle I enjoy need both so if they aren't available, the house won't work. Somebody that just must live someplace without comms needs to sort out their priorities. There's been satellite internet for many years now and VOIP is a thing. If that still means that there's no phone service on the other end of the property away from the house, why is it that one should whinge about it?
TBH townies have been subsidising Universal Service for those in the sticks on telecoms, utilities, post, transport, government services and healthcare since they were invented.
This will help when stupid English go for a walk on Ben Nevis in their flop-flops and little clothes in the summer and need recovered by Mountain Rescue.
<Universal Service Obligations - that’s not a bad thing BTW>
"This will help when stupid English go for a walk on Ben Nevis in their flop-flops and little clothes in the summer and need recovered by Mountain Rescue."
Let them bleed, I say. The bigger issue is when I want to go commune with nature and there's a bunch of other people nattering away on their phones spoiling the peace.
Do they get billed per minute? Per customer that uses it at least once in a month? Per customer that has it available? Some combination of all of the above?
That will determine how telcos ultimately bill their customers. I expect the top end gold plated packages, and the packages that corporations buy in bulk for their employee devices, will have it included. It will be an add on for everyone else.
Apple is a different case. They bought a bunch of new satellites for Globalstar to operate, so it is essentially a fixed cost service for them. I think emergency messaging will always be free for iPhone owners, but ultimately all the non emergency type stuff will be free for some limited time like a year or two but eventually you'll have to pay and it'll probably appear as another service included in Apple One. Of course there will be some overlap because people have satellite stuff through their carrier wouldn't need to pay for duplication from Apple, or vice versa if what they get on their iPhone is good enough they won't want to pay their carrier for it (including having their carrier give them something "for free" they won't be using)
That is one important factor, and the other is how they bill the users. If I'm a T-Mobile customer, what do I get by paying them the extra amount every month? Do I get to send unlimited messages, or is there a cap? Do my messages go through immediately or do I need to fiddle around for a long time to get them to send? Do received messages come back through the satellite reliably or do I have to do strange things periodically in the hope that someone has sent a message to receive? Theoretically, some of that should be knowable by people who have tried the beta, but I don't know and I expect that whatever it is now, it will change both for the better (quality and speed will probably improve) and for the worse (they will want lots of money for it). the two sides of how much someone pays and what service they get in return will determine how many people even consider buying it.
I've read varying accounts from people who have tried it in beta, but since Musk has long been a polarizing figure even before he turned himself into a partisan lightning rod it is hard to tell if people are exaggerating the issues or trying to paper over the shortcomings.
Theoretically I could try it myself since I remember reading the beta is open to iPhone users who aren't on Tmobile, but I don't know exactly what steps are needed and it isn't worth the bother. I'd have to figure out where Verizon has a dead zone so dead that a satellite is going to give a stronger signal than even a distant "one bar but when you try to use it it goes no signal" tower, which is probably at least an hour round trip. I'm curious but not nearly that curious!
For my part all I really care about with satellite is being able to reach someone if I'm in an emergency situation in the rare cases I'm out of coverage, and Apple's service provides that. If I lived in or near an area with no service I'd want something that's more generally useful. If I did live in such a place my fear would be that this service is kind of half assed (it works but not well, with plenty of missed/dropped calls) but the cell company considers that "good enough" and scraps any plans they might have had for putting up towers to cover the area.
I live in a pretty good sized city but there's a lot of really rural areas in my state so I've seen firsthand how they've been filling in the gaps over the past decade. When I'd ride my bike around the area 10 years ago I could ride a little over 10 miles away and be in an area of no service. I don't have any clue how far I'd have to go to see no service pop up on my phone, but I know it is out of range of any of my bike loops. It would suck for the people who live out there if they're told they'll never get a tower because "Starlink is good enough for texts and calls, if you want to use data too bad"
Another thing to consider is the number of players in the market currently, and how much of a consolidation we are going to see? European regulators have tired to maintain a minimum of three MNOs in their markets, as two heads towards a duopoly situation. Will we see the same for the space based services, IF they can find some means of making it pay in the first place. I would guess that with the costs of getting into space in the first place, we are not going to see more than one or two players remain viable. Just about every NGSO satellite network to date (baring SpaceX) has gone bust, and some have even been resurrected as there are valuable defence contracts still to be serviced, or hardware flung up to the heavens.
All Oz telcos switched off 3G. Most of the country 150 km from coast then had very unreliable 4G. An inland drive from southern NSW to Qld border now has many no comms locations. Only 65 km from the hell hole known as Canberra, the national crapital, the summer visitors boating on Lake Burrinjuck collapsed my localities comms. No phone, no SMS. All of us had to drive 2 Km plus to a ridge to get line of site connection to a town tower.
Telstra, mostly the telco responsible, when questioned why phone service had gone so bad, responded with "Fringe area, tough" response.
as its a federal election year, political staffers responses explained that, in the fullness of time, government might ask if the telcos could connect to satellite services. In short "tough"
So the non large urban areas have largely gone dark. Yet oddly, not a peep from any of the media over a significant walk backwards in communications.
Technically, satellite to mobile is probably the best way to connect this sparsely settled land. In the meantime, outside the east coast , 3G should have been kept until satellite comms is available at an affordable price. Not many can afford a SPOT device
Benefits of 5G for me:
At home, in the suburbs, with a perfect 4G signal (tower about 50 metres from my bedroom window), I get about 55Mb/s, same as I get on my wired connection which is connected to the same street cabinet as the 4G tower.
In the city centre where the network is very congested, I get similar speeds on 5G compared to what I get on home on 4G, whereas on 4G I was getting much slower speeds.
You could probably stream one 1080P connection with 5 Mbps, but if you had more than one person trying to do that simultaneously, one or both of those videos would probably stream badly. If you have to have a videoconference and care that your video was not jittery, increase that number a bit. In many cases, I could have a 5 Mbps connection and not notice for quite a while. I've had much lower numbers in the past. However, with the availability of faster networks, I will use them and benefit from it, for example, when a gigabyte file downloads in a minute and a half instead of twenty seven, I notice that. I was recently uploading about twelve gigabytes of created system images (compressed on my end, naturally), and having that done in an hour while I could easily use other services was a lot better than doing it overnight. If the images I created were a lot larger, that could have made an even bigger difference. Some people move large files in either direction a lot more often than I do, and from the sound of it, I do that more often than you do.
Mostly because there are lots of holes in coverage where I live. But also because the service to the house goes down several times a year and finally because I don't like being censored by telecom companies so good to have alternatives. They do censor by the way. I have found legitimate sites, nothing to do with porn, unreachable without VPN. I can see VPN and all encryption being banned the way things are going in the UK. It will be little by little and in the name of safety. A bit like politicians talking about saving "our democracy" they don't mean the people's they mean theirs! So, a non UK controlled service might provide access to the world after they have constructed the Great Firewall of Britain.
That's why I laugh when people blame corporations for whatever ails the world. First you need to understand them. They are basically money extraction businesses, they take money from ordinary people and pass it to sharefolders and execs. That is their business. The rest is an excuse. I'm actually ok with that. But it is up to those ordinary people to ensure they get a fair return and the corporates are not out of control. They should be able to do that by voting for representatives to govern and make laws to stop excesses. Unfortnately, that system seems to have been massively abused and isn't working well at the moment. The corporation fund our representatives via various hidden means such as board appointments later or helping their "foundations" and guess who OUR reprentatives are actually representing.
The only way out is if we, the people, take back control of government. I hope this can be done peacefully.. I don't want to think about the alternatives. But the sooner it starts happening the more peaceful it will be. We have to learn to a) really not trust them, b) not allow the media to give us our opinions and c) grow up because instant gratification doesn't work.
Telecom people should look at rural buildout costs avoided and repair costs reduced. All the farmland and small towns they won't have to build towers for will be a tremendous cost savings. And if a current cell tower goes down, they have to send a crew out right away. With satellite emergency coverage an evening outage can wait until early morning. Or look at the Portugal / Spain outage. Thousands of cell towers down, at least let them text other people until power comes back up.
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