SpaceX to become ‘major mobile carrier’ in US with Starlink Mobile upgrades

SpaceX has announced plans to make Starlink Mobile a “major mobile carrier in the US” thanks to two major new developments. Here are the details.

SpaceX announces two milestones toward making Starlink Mobile a full-fledged mobile carrier

Starlink Mobile might soon be a full-fledged mobile carrier option for your iPhone.

SpaceX announced this week two big developments to accomplish this goal.

1. A new “nationwide low-band spectrum license portfolio”
2. FCC approval for Starlink Mobile’s Gen2 constellation application

The former is a major milestone in the journey toward Starlink Mobile becoming a genuine alternative to other mobile carriers. From the announcement:

While Starlink Mobile’s global 2 GHz mid-band spectrum will provide high-bandwidth capacity in the United States, this new low-band spectrum will provide a coverage layer that ensures Starlink Mobile’s signal penetrates through obstacles, such as walls, and can provide service to customers’ devices even when they are in buildings. Critically, most existing mobile devices already support this underused band.

Final FCC approval hasn’t been granted yet, but SpaceX anticipates it will be and the company can move forward with deploying “a flexible architecture combining our satellite-to-mobile constellation in space with an advanced terrestrial deployment.”

The FCC has approved, however, the deployment of 15,000 satellites that are optimized for 2 GHz spectrum globally. These V2 Starlink Mobile satellites deliver “more than 100 times” the bandwidth of the current generation, boosting connection speeds globally.

Would you be interested in using Starlink Mobile as your iPhone carrier? Let us know in the comments.

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