Elon Musk claims SpaceX was in talks with Apple on iPhone 14 satellite services Following the debut of the iPhone 14 this week, Elon Musk has claimed that Apple had been locked in talks with SpaceX about the new handset's satellite capabilities. Responding to a wishful tech fan wondering whether the gadget giant would hook up with SpaceX's Starlink for the Emergency SOS feature, which calls for help where …
Their next generation satellites will have a much larger phased array antenna and be able to pick up weaker signals. Presumably signals as weak as a cellular phone would send out. We'll have to see how well it works. I also wonder about the radiation pattern - phones have some very fancy antennas to allow them to make their broadcasts directional. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they use the three axis MEMs sensors to determine position of the phone and avoid broadcasting signals straight up and straight down because there are no towers there.
Normally I would assume that if a deal is announced like the SpaceX / T-Mobile thing that it is already known to work, but given 1) SpaceX doesn't have any of these satellites in orbit yet and 2) Musk is well known for making wild claims he can't back up, so I wouldn't take for granted it will work at all.
Picking up the space to Earth signals won't be no picnic either. Satellites are limited in the amount of power they are allowed to broadcast per area and cellular phones don't have dishes or even external antennas. "You're holding it wrong" might be always be a thing when trying to connect with that service, and it will need hella error correction redundancy to get a passable SNR so the data rate will probably make 2G look blazingly fast.
With a slightly improved beam forming 5G antennae, perhaps requiring the phone to be flat or pointed in the right direction it might be possible in the future for some bandwidth data link. IIRC a bunch of these space internet companies have "demonstrated" this.
You can see how SpaceX would love this, a billion potential customers that they don't need to supply H/W to.
Whether that bandwidth is worth the cost for non-emergency use? If you have internet but can't do spotify or netflix or tiktok is there any point ? (kids today!)
> contacting emergency services where there is no coverage, such as an injured climber on a remote mountainside.
Providing that climber didn't land on their iphone and break it. And that it wasn't a caver with neither signal nor view of the sky
And then there's always the question of whether the battery has gone flat and the assumption that the caller can physically use or reach their phone.
In all, this just sounds like a marketing tool. I am sure they will find someone, somewhere whose life was saved by this, but I personally have never felt the need for this.
> may find this feature useful?
There are plenty of outfits thst already make satellite distress beacons which do exactly this. Garmin is one example and it works whether you have an iphone or an Android phone or no phone at all!
If you actually had a need, you would already be using one.
So no, I'm afraid all that has happened is that Apple have told you that you need something and you then rationalise a case for wanting one.
A complete victory for their marketing department.
>If you actually had a need, you would already be using one.
Satellite beacons are $500+ and a $100-200/year subscription.
People that really need them have them, but your average hiker outside Alaska probably doesn't have one - but might need one.
It's like a life jacket vs a immersion suit, everyone on the water has a life jacket, those that really need one has a survival suit but your average jetskier doesn't. This gives everyone a free immersion suit.
Zoleo satellite messaging devices are a little over £200 and a basic plan to include 25 messages is £18.00 per month.
On the other end of the scale, a Breitling emergency watch costs thousands but no annual costs and you have to sign an agreement not to use them except in a genuine emergency, with a huge fine if misused.
Not even a good immersion suit. The proper PLB (personal locator beacons) also transmits radio to passing aircraft, are actually submersible and have a battery that is not subject to your social media habits. Also, not all of them have a subscription plan: the arguably best ones do not (the Copas-Sarsat ones you just need to register with some national agency).
So it will assist the "casual" hikers who get hurt, motorists beyond cell reception (etc), but does nothing for the actual expedition (or expedition light) crowd.
It's certainly a new feature. But at this early stage, I'd suggest it's more of a "nice to have" option for a minority of iPhone users and not a "killer app". After all, *all* features are useful to *someone*, but when it's a small minority, it smells more like desperate marketing rather than genuinely useful for the many. There's not been anything really new or revolutionary in the smartphone market for a while now. New "flagships" are ann9ounced every year or two and they are only minor upgrade iterations of the last one. That, along with market saturation, is killing Apples "upgrade or die" model.
Okay, so it won't help if I'm in cave, and/or the phone is nonfunctional for whatever reason, and/or I'm physically incapable of using it. Got it.
That doesn't make it "just a marketing tool". I can easily imagine plenty of situations where none of those conditions apply, and yet I need emergency services.
I think it will be useful. Hopefully I will never need it, but I could see a possible use for if I got in a car accident, or was the victim of a hit and run while I'm riding my bike.
Odds are good if that happens I'll be somewhere in cellular coverage and the satellite won't matter, but that's not guaranteed if I'm more than 10-15 miles out of town - and even in town there are some dead spots with 1 bar and that might translate to 0 bars if you're in a ditch in a low area.
Hardly a gimmick.
The situation you just described is a pretty rare occurrence, otherwise the news would be full of reports of bodies being found in ditches all over the countryside. Providing a service to millions "free for the first two years" where the actual need for it might be a very few people still sounds like a marketing gimmick. It comes across as "if saves one childs life, it's worth spending billions/restricting the right of millions/whatever" type of cries we here frequently.
I'm not saying this service should not exist, nor that it is pointless or useless. I'm simply pointing out that a hugely profitable corporation like Apple isn't doing this to save lives. it's a marketing exercise, for whatever reason they think they have for it. Maybe it's costing them next to nothing to add the feature and they think it's worth the extra expense for the reputational gloss they get from it?
Being in an accident outside of cellular range is unlikely to lead to a fatality except in very cold climates or if you are severely injured.
I mean, before cell phones people got in accidents all the time and didn't die. At least most of the time they didn't. But it was damned inconvenient to have to flag down a passing car, walk back to "civilization" yourself, or knock on some random door in the countryside and hope whoever answers lets you use their phone. Any of those scenarios is potentially dangerous for women traveling alone even in the best of circumstances - this feature is going to appeal to them more than you. Maybe you should think about whether you'd want your wife or daughter to have this option if they found themselves in such a circumstance? Would you want them flagging down a random motorist on a deserted road, or knocking on a stranger's door with the next nearest house a half mile away?
It may not save thousands of lives, but it WILL save lives, and Apple will benefit from those stories being reported just like they benefit from the stories of people who found out about an unknown heart issue with their Apple Watch and had medical intervention in time to save their life. Is it terrible if saving lives and marketing wins are both outcomes of this, or do you only want to see features implemented for purely altruistic reasons?
Where's the eye roll icon when I need it?
Many of the problems we have now with people getting into difficulties are as a directly result of the mobile phone.
In the old days, if you when out most people had the appropriate clothing & equipment. They also had maps, a compass and usually even know where they were going.
Since the advent of the mobile phone and assumed "universal coverage" people go out ill equipped and totally unprepared. Social Media pictures from all sort of remote (and not so remote) places make too many people see then as safe and accessible.
The result is morons that walk up hills, mountains, or even just remote countryside in a tee-shirt trainers holding a bottle of Coke and a mobile phone. Then when something goes wrong they are stuffed but hey, I have a phone, just call for help.
Incidents like this are unfortunately quite frequent in the US. A lot of these people simply go missing, not to be found for years, decades or ever. There's still a lot of the world not covered by traditional cell-phone towers and tech like Apples new system could definitely save lives. It's far more frequent than you seem to think.
Yes that was stated in an article I read describing how the system works on an iPhone. It puts an arrow or something on the screen telling you where to point the phone, and it may take a minute or two to send a single emergency text with confirmation it was received.
Apple's / Globalstar's solution is something that appears to be operating on the very edge of what the technology is capable of - the current Globalstar satellites were designed to transmit to devices with large external antennas, after all.
Obviously there is room for improvement (and Globalstar said last spring it is launching new satellites paid for "by a major customer") but that will take time. For now what Apple is offering is the only game in town.
It doesn't sound like Apple has an exclusive arrangement with them as far as I can tell, and the capability they are using is built into the Qualcomm modem, so presumably Android OEMs who use Qualcomm SoCs would also be able to offer this service (though the 3.5 GHz S band frequency it uses won't necessarily be available in countries outside the US depending on their spectrum allocations)
These things go well beyond SAR beacons. There are vast swathes of the planet without phone coverage (eg: most of the oceans) where the incumbents charge an arm and a leg.
Iridium is OK but limited
The whole communications paradigm is changing in ways that people are only just begnning to suspect
Back in the 1980s when I was installing AMPS stations nobody dreamed that everybody and his cat would have a mobile phone in their back pocket within 15 years, let alone a full fledged video-calling computer and global libraries of cat videos within 25 years - that stuff was Star Trek dreams of 2 centuries away, vs the certainty of flying cars being just around the corner
The article says: "there's only so much you can do in terms of software when many Starlink satellites are already up in orbit."
I don't understand? Surely you just do an over-the-air update of the software in the satellites? Musk is famous for updating cars, so I'd be very surprised if he can't update his satellites as well.
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"... does this not carry the potential to track a phone even if it's out of reach of the normal networks?"
Every coin has two sides !!!
There is the other side !!!
If you really need to be able to communicate where there is no 3/4/5/6G network, you can get a Sat-Phone now that supports full 2-way voice comms.
Apple is more and more focused on gimmicks to sell the latest iphone !!!
You have to jump through some pretty big hoops to get a satellite signal.
So if the domestic terrorist patriot is prepared to closely follow the onscreen instructions and keep the phone pointed at the satellite for 5-15mins then the MMB will know their location, but probably only to a 100km from a single pass fix (in use the phone sends it's local GPS location as part of the SAR message)
It requires the next generation Starlink satellites that are much larger, and which haven't started launching yet. It also remains to be seen exactly how well a smartphone can maintain a 5G connection to a satellite.
Apple wanted something they could deploy now, not in a few years, so Starlink was never going to be in the running - though it might be for a future improved version of the service that isn't emergency only. I'm guessing that's what Apple had conversations with Musk about.
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well, we have only 1 tweet from EM about this, and based on this account history the probability that it is a fake new is very high (confer all the tweets about Tesla's autonomous driving capabilities).
Twitter should mark this a "dubious" and block the account for a few days at a minimum...
The new ones are not exactly "Cube Sats" the are weighing in at 1250Kg & 7m long compared to 260Kg for the current ones.
Then their proposal is up to 42,000.
They are not exactly the lightweight "Cube Sat" that will have minimal impact.
1. Globalstar uplink is on 1.6 GHz, downlink is on 2.5 GHz. That's right in the range an iPhone has to support for 3G/4G/5G anyways and can be done with the existing hardware. Starlink on the other hand is on 10-12 GHz, no mobile device is anywhere near that.
2. Globalstar is basically 2G in space. Their next evolution is simply 5G, standardised as band n53 by the 3GPP. This is already supported by some of Qualcomm's modems. Qualcomm supplies Apple. This has been known for at least 18 months:
https://investors.globalstar.com/news-releases/news-release-details/globalstars-band-n53-qualcomms-x65-modem/
Starlink would have to be implemented from scratch and also require regular updates while they're tuning the network.
3. Starlink coverage is spotty at best and doesn't cover larger bodiea of water. Nobody knows how it will evolve, if their Inter-Satellite Links will work as expected, etc.
If all you want is to be able to send a single text message when you point your smartphone exactly at a satellite for up to several minutes (yes, you have to do that) in 2022, then you clearly go for Globalstar.
That is a nice summary and quite a logical conclusion.
That also seem to suggest that Musk is (again) talking BS, maybe to pump his shares - given the above there may have been a phone call or maybe one meeting at most because Starlink is simply not compatible. There is no way they would have gotten into substantive talks as it would presently be a waste of time ("presently" because Musk could have some things added to the next generation, but that would still be months of not years away from launch).
Thanks for this.
The current satellites must hop to the satellite and down to a ground station -- the satellite-to-satellite laser link stuff is not on them currently. (I don't know if it will be on them or if that part was vaporware...)
Spotty coverage? Yes and no.
Yes, there are a few areas outside single-hop range of a ground station. They will have no service.
No, service is not spotty within the coverage areas, which do include a lot of ocean. Since a typical cruise liner is going to vacation destinations, not going to the area of the ocean with no islands for 1000s of miles, I doubt this applies in this case. I know someone with Starlink (in Colorado), and they might as well have conventional internet service. It sounds like he doesn't even have to go and clean snow off the dish (which you sure do on a TV dish if it snows much, unless it's greased up so the snow slides off); he lost service due to snow once when it snowed a foot or two in a matter of hours (it does that in the Rocky Mountains) but that was just before his power went out anyway so cleaning the Starlink receiver was a moot point at that point.
What I read it’s not “one cruise ship company partnered with star link” but star link offering the complete hardware so a cruise ship can offer satellite internet to its passengers, for about $30,000 per ship. That’s one base station plus the hardware to distribute it across a 300 meter ship, 60 meters high, with lots and lots and lots of very thick steel.
Given Starlink already has more Starlink satellites in space than any other provider, the idea it doesn't cover as much area as Globalstar's 48 satellites+4 spare, seems a moot point, given SpaceX has had 40 launches already this year, with the last one alone, carrying 52 satellites.
Globalstar, itself, only covers Earth from 70° North latitude to 70° South latitude.
Starlink satellites are in low orbit (550km) to reduce latency and increase throughput. Until their Inter-Satellite Links work, they need a ground-based gateway within a couple hundred kilometres of the customer.
Globalstar satellites are in a much higher orbit (1400km) and need a gateway within about 3000 kilometers.
So coverage is not connected to the number of satellites.
My question is not how can a satellite pick up the phone. Mine is, how can this really work on an unmodified phone, given that many many phones only support licensed bands, and (in US) I *REALLY* cannot see Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, US Cellular, etc., saying "Yes, go ahead and blast out signals on our licensed spectrum." (As a practical matter, I do think it's entirely possible for the satellites to aim accurately enough to only beam into unserved areas; but, the licenses are not set up that way, they are set up so the phone companies has exclusive rights within a given geographic area.)
It doesn't matter how free they keep it the FCC does not allow transmitting any of these bands from space nor do any other radio management agencies around the world. So any hope they have of this working is a decade or more away.
Then there is the whole problem of distance. Anyone here notice when they are more than ~20km from a tower their phone says no service yea that satellite is over 1000km away. Yes they will come in closer but at 500km that thing is moving too fast to keep a signal to a phone.
Yes mobiles can go more than 20km but they tend to not allow it due to the whole problem of TDM, most 5G transmissions are going to be cut far shorter than that. At the distance, they are I wouldn't be surprised if when someone was on a call it knocked cell service out for everyone within 3000 km.
TLDR radio management is hard very hard. Anyone who works in radio knows Apple went the way they did for assurance of a service existing 5 years from now and tech that actually works.
As for Starlink it has many battles to remain as is never mind deliver new things.
Didn't realize they were coordinating with T-Mo over it. That'd help that issue. I suppose (in the US at least) there is the C-Band -- it's been taken away from satellite operators (well, around 2/3rds to 3/4s the band at any rate) to be transferred over for cellular use. (Well, the C-Band operators have been compensated for the costs of changing out any equipment they need to move from lower or mid CBand to upper CBand they have left.) I suppose since it's already being taken from satellite use to terrestrial there are probably still all the rules in place allowing it for satellite use still.
(Note, this isn't as bad as it sounds for the satellite users -- when CBand was allocated, you had no K, KA, or Ku band satellites so everything was on C; and you had analog TV using 6mhz for 1 channel. With digital TV transmission & 3 other bands to use, each CBand satellite company had their own chunk of spectrum but a large portion of each companies allocation was sitting unused.)
This feels like perfect time to start actively promoting the no doubt hundreds of web sites that claim that satellite signals and cel phones cause brain damage. Even if it didn't involve Musk I can't imagine this won't turn out to be massive headache rather than a solution to any real problem.
(Dear God. Try a Google search for satellite signals cause brain damage. Even the legitimate results are frightening!)
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