“I highly suspect that T-Mobile may partner with SpaceX and Starlink to provide internet service to its customers. For a long time, I used my T-Mobile hotspot until I was told that the plan I was on was no longer available and so I switched to AT&T. Before switching to AT&T, I tried T-Mobile’s home internet service and although I was told my area had perfect coverage, it honestly did not. At all.
During my interview with him, Elon Musk also talked about how Starlink would help improve peoples’ income and standard of living. His concern was that there is a large portion of the world who don’t have access to internet connectivity.
“Starlink can provide connectivity for a whole village of like 200 people type of thing and then, in that case, it would be like 50 cents a month per person. I think that’s pretty affordable,” he told me.
Whatever the two companies have planned, I’m pretty excited about it especially since 5G doesn’t work that well in Baton Rouge although we have towards and I have a 5G capable device.”
Comment: So do I. pl
SpaceX & T-Mobile plan to announce plans to increase connectivity (teslarati.com)
I’m curious as to what what today’s announcement will bring. I can’t imagine how 5G and SATCOM will work together. Could it be as simple as a plan to have StarLink enabled cell towers? The holy grail is to have handheld devices capable of bringing satellite internet directly to a smartphone for a reasonable price. There are Garmin inReach and Spot devices that can do SMS in addition to the normal tracking and navigation services, but not voice or email. Asking a typical smart phone user to switch to a Garmin inReach is like asking them to switch to a 300 baud dialup connection.
There have been quite a bit of standardization efforts regarding this. I believe the following article https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=9741772
is open access.
Ti’s quite technical but has some figures on page 9. I also don’t know how to upload a figure here.
I don’t know exactly what SpaceX and T-Mobile are doing, but it’s probably one or more of these scenarios.
There are already standards for internetworking between Cellular and Internet [the two concepts have largely merged and we are used to it] which have been around at least for 20+ years. The cellular network would have a local Gateway (giant switch) which would then talk to the satellite infrastructure. Since the LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellites are moving quite fast, handing over between different satellites is needed, but they move in very predictable patterns.
kodlu – good link –
Statements that I am thinking on
“Additional standardization directions to achieve the complete integration of satellite and terrestrial 6G networks” [diagram p 19]
“To support the intelligence and autonomous nature of 6G, the concept of Self-Evolving Network (SEN) was presented in [40], [41]. SEN considers the integrated architecture of 6G and beyond. SEN utilizes AI/ML to make future integrated networks fully automated…” [p 19]
I am one of those that watches CSPAN from time to time – a LOT on there never gets covered in the media. Listened to someone from the Pentagon a few years ago (want to say 2015 or 2016); the individual presenting had lots of what I call ‘bells and whistles’ on the uniform (civilian here: military ranks confuse hell-outa-me). The talk was on SEN and AI/ML for real time [actionable information] on chain of command decisions… I tried to follow up on the funding aspect for the project and that seemed to be where some of this stalled at the Pentagon…
Now the same concepts are in the hands of Starlink… I like Elon Musk – like him a lot – thing is, when Musk is paying attention to a project it does well-very well- it is when he moves on to other things and leaves someone else in charge that we have to watch out..
I get that it has to be AI’s, and that they are necessary tools for this. When it comes to AI’s I have two questions. Who is designing them, and what are their command instructions?
I like the greater good that could come of this and focus on that… the concerns can keep me up nights.
kj
Didn’t watch the whole presentation yet, but here’s two Musk tweets which I assume sums it up. Sounds way better than I thought it would be.
“Starlink V2, launching next year, will transmit direct to mobile phones, eliminating dead zones worldwide”
“Note, connectivity will be 2 to 4 Mbits per cell zone, so will work great for texting & voice calls, but not high bandwidth”