- They went from launch to sats being operational in 8 days. That seems fast, although admittedly I don't track such things, and perhaps the other long commissioning times have been due to needing to raise to a higher orbit...
The platform commissioning is extremely fast (and automated). After thousands of sats, they've got it on lock. The payload commissioning was basically "let's turn it on and see if it works", and getting to the point of real traffic (rather than just some test tones or whatever) would be pretty fast.
Often experimental sats (as has been described with these sats) get permission to operate in non-final locations--and often at lower power levels--hence the lack of wait-for-orbit-raising time.
- LOL at the messages sent... right up there with test launches of blocks of cheese and cars to space
Those were the texts you saw. It's practically tradition in space to send a poo emoji.
- The press release talks about the extreme difficulty in getting the sat to work with an unmodified cell phone with 0.2W max(!), and custom silicon to help with stuff like doppler shift at sat speeds... very cool
To be fair, it's basically the same silicon set that's been on the Starlink broadband sats. No less impressive, but not really a new set of technology, other than switching for protocols and frequencies.
- Will be interesting to see a voice service test, and if these initial D2D pilot birds will be able to do that, or it will take an upgraded version
Voice is really hard--just look at Iridium and their highly advantaged device antennas. Beyond being a bigger consumer than something like a text, voice is also something you can't put in a queue like a text, which can get sent asymmetrically without much impact to user experience. Voice has to be prioritized traffic. While It's hard to imagine these sats not being able to carry a voice call in a clean test environment, it's equally hard to imagine these sats being able to carry voice calls in a production environment. I'd speculate that 911 calls will be the first and potentially only voice offered over these sats, and also that casual voice calls won't be a thing until larger sats (and thus, corollary smaller beams) are operational.
I wonder if it will allow for free emergency services text messages the way we can dial 911 from any cell phone. If you're lost in the wilderness, being able to get a text out to emergency services in your area can save your life.
It's hard to imagine T-mobile NOT enabling text-to-911 for all customers. That's not a comprehensive solution as some backwater places don't have text to 911 yet (that's why Apple set up their own intermediary stations for those areas), but its certainly way better than nothing.
I suspect it's possible for T-mobile to extend the good-will of free text to 911 to roaming users as well.
Thank you for the reply. I would certainly interested getting some temporary subscrition plans so when visit a National Park, cruising on a boat,
or going hiking... I will still be able to use my phone or access the Internet, something I often experienced (see my Tesla avatar display).
Otherwise I don't really think that I will use or need any satellite communication.
Horse beating here, but it's really important to temper expectations on overall experience. American National Parks, for instance, are BY FAR the densest concentration of unconnected mobile devices; that's where service is going to be at its worse. These current D2D starlinks are 7mbps or some such per beam, and that’s likely in a perfect environment where occlusions aren’t attenuating the link or driving re-tries and such. Spread that 7mbps over the Dry Tortugas and it’s not going to be so bad. But big Out West parks or The Smokies? Set expectations at 'Bad'…
It's also not yet clear how well the link is going to work for "normal" in-pocket use (receiving notifications, etc), or when sky views are limited or occluded. While the perceived experience is mostly limited by the satellite (and its regulated power output), there's also the fact that a phone may have to operate at high power levels in both directions. That's not really a sustainable operation mode as it can burn through battery life (and it's why Apple specifically avoids it by having the user 'wake up' the satellite functionality by initiating any satellite communications).
Overall, I'd guess the average best case experience, probably starting late 2025 at the earliest, will be something similar to what we had when phones were operating on 2G networks. Maybe in early 2025 a best-effort emergency text service will go live, and maybe some limited 'regular' texting.
I only said "some" mainly because I had to scan a few search results to find it.
