One article on it:
I can’t say I’ve ever heard good things about Rogers. But if the deal can help Rogers provide better service out there, that certainly sounds like a good thing.
If the article is accurate, it’s mostly about their upcoming satellite-to-cell technology, which would reuse the ground spectrum in use in the area. So that means making deals with local providers. Canadians can already get normal Starlink internet service.
About a year and a half later, and the system is starting to work:
SPACEX SENDS FIRST TEXT MESSAGES VIA ITS NEWLY LAUNCHED DIRECT TO CELL SATELLITES
On Monday, January 8, the Starlink team successfully sent and received our first text messages using T-Mobile network spectrum through one of our new Direct to Cell satellites launched six days prior. Connecting cell phones to satellites has several major challenges to overcome. For example, in terrestrial networks cell towers are stationary, but in a satellite network they move at tens of thousands of miles per hour relative to users on Earth. This requires seamless handoffs between satellites and accommodations for factors like Doppler shift and timing delays that challenge phone to space communications. Cell phones are also incredibly difficult to connect to satellites hundreds of kilometers away given a mobile phone’s low antenna gain and transmit power. Starlink satellites with the Direct to Cell payload are equipped with innovative new custom silicon, phased array antennas, and advanced software algorithms that overcome these challenges and provide standard LTE service to cell phones on the ground. As the global leader in rocket and satellite launch and manufacturing, SpaceX is uniquely positioned to rapidly scale our Direct to Cell network and will rapidly launch a constellation of hundreds of satellites to enable text service in 2024 and voice, data, and Internet of Things (IoT) services in 2025.
In case it’s not apparent, this is an unmodified phone sending texts to a satellite. iPhone has their emergency SOS service, but it only works on specific phones and isn’t a standard SMS text.
Voice/data services will come later (and be very limited), but even just texting support is huge.
It’s thought that the Lego-looking thing at the top of the stack here is the new direct-to-cell antenna:
Yep. Starlink will eventually mean that anyone with a cell phone can be connected from anywhere on the globe, at least for emergency and notification purposes.
This is a big deal.
That’s already possible with Apple iPhone 14 or later phones, though I don’t think they use Starlink.
It’s a very limited service in comparison. Emergency use only, special hardware, and isn’t instant (might take minutes), and also has latitude limits. The Starlink system works with any LTE phone.
True enough, although as Dr. Strangelove said it’s not standard SMS but a special protocol. But yeah, for emergencies that’s a good thing. But iPhones are a subset of the phones out there. Starlink will technically work for everyone.
If you can drive from North BC to Yellowknife (say) and connect anywhere, that is a big deal for many Canadians.
I’d sooner gnaw my own arm off than use an iPhone, so this serves as an overall benefit to me even for only emergency use.
I wonder if Starlink will offer free emergency service, or if it ends up being mandated. Conventional cell operators are required to serve 911 calls even from different networks. Since Starlink is basically a cell operator, they may be required to serve them for free.
I get a headache trying to imagine the logistics involved with handling 911 calls for the entire world. Even just the fact that each country has its own number to call (911, 999, 112, etc…) gives me agita.
It is an interesting problem. The coverage area for a single cell tower is almost always handled by one service region… but a single satellite covers a radius of hundreds of kilometers! And is flying away at 17,000 mph.
The satellites should have coarse location information. They have a fairly tight spot beam. But it is probably still no better than kilometers. There are protocols for phones sending their own GPS location info over the network, which would be far more accurate. But the system would still have to do some kind of lookup for the emergency service provider and then route the information. Very tricky.
The selection of the responder would correspond purely to the location of the call. What emergency number the caller used would be irrelevant.
So geolocate the call, look up the agency responsible for that patch of Earth, route accordingly. Other than needing a planet-wide database of emergency responders and jurisdiction boundaries, straightforward.
Did you need a /s there? Maybe I’m not understanding, but either way you would need an absolutely huge database. Big data is no problem keeping it up to date is.
It would be a large database. It would also need to be cooperatively managed by all the participating agencies.
But there is precedent. Lifesaving has been shown to be worth the effort.
Getting back to the OP–it looks like SpaceX has a handle on managing their fleet:
More satellites, fewer encounters. They still need ~50,000 maneuvers per year to maintain separation, which is certainly quite a lot, but obviously their automation can handle it.
I don’t think there’s been much progress since 2021 in government oversight of these megaconstealltions. But no one but SpaceX has a greater interest in maintaining their network, and it poses the greatest threat to itself due to the sheer number (and sharing orbits). Hopefully, the Kuiper network will take the same attitude.
IIRC the system already does location infomation - for example, I read somewhere you cannot just take your base station to some other country that has not approved the service yet (unless, say, Iran and the US State department decides it’s OK). I assume that’s due to issues over the base station transmission being licensed. The same would logically apply to providing cell service unless licensed by the country. I suppose Starlink does not want to flaunt country laws if they expect a lucrative payoff down the road from legitimate business there. Plus, base stations might need GPS location anyway to determine the best satellite to connect to and when to switch.
Also, I assume the system is designed so there are multiple satellites in view (hence the large number) and a ground station or phone is not attempting to reach the far horizon, but more likely is closer to directly overhead. Yes, still a hefty area to cover, but not hundreds of miles in each direction?
I wonder if this means I can use my phone’s hotspot as a base station… 
How would that work if I wanted to use Starlink while traveling, such as around in an RV?
The satellites are fairly evenly distributed up to a certain latitude–I’m not going to do the math, but let’s say 2/3 of the Earth’s surface. That comes to 133M mi^2. There are about 5000 satellites operating at the moment, which means each has to cover 27,000 mi^2 on average. That’s a circle with a diameter of 180 mi. Not trivial, and that’s average–sometimes the satellites are spaced farther apart.
But yes, it does have position information since the antennas use beamforming, and they have to know where to point the beam. I doubt this gets them within any more than a few tens of miles, though.
The standard receivers already have GPS on them, though I’m not 100% why. It may just be to improve the initial setup process.
Yes, that too. They’ve provided service in Iran–illegally, but with the blessing (and maybe request?) of the US State Department (the ITU didn’t like it, though). On the other hand, they aren’t going to do the same in China.
Works fine if you get a roaming plan. They’re more expensive than the standard plans because they kinda screw up the bandwidth allocation. If everyone was static, then they could just sell a limited number in each zone so that everyone gets reasonable service. But if too many move to congested areas, then service gets worse. So they increase the price of the mobile version to make it slightly less attractive. Still a good solution for back-country RVers, though.
Check this out, set satellite selection to “All”
Seems like the technical term is “pretty well covered”. Still need a few more polar and high angle orbits. More launches from California I assume. Seems surprising that it does not fully cover Scotland or much of Scandinavia.
I get an image like this, which I find frankly unbelievable. Are the sats hovering in a perfect rectangle over inhabited lands?
Well, the left and right edges of the “rectangle” are continuous with each other (they’re both the 180th Meridian).
What that depicts is that the orbits of the (approximately) 5000 Starlink satellites are concentrated in a broad band between 60° north latitude and 60° south.
They’re not hovering; they’re in orbit, which means they’re moving pretty fast. But their orbit has the majority of the satellites spending the majority of their time in that latitude band, so any snapshot in time will show most of the spacecraft there.
The size of the icons is obviously exaggerated.