IMAGE: SpaceX
Starlink has revamped its website, adding an internet, voice and data service for smartphones with LTE connectivity, called Starlink Direct to Cell, expanding its role as a telecommunications provider and positioning itself as a potential partner with other carriers as a standard roaming partner by increasing the coverage of the cellphone networks of its space-based telecom towers.
The company’s idea is to start with a text messaging service in 2024, and then move on to complete its offering with the inclusion of voice, data and IoT in 2025, all without the need to carry out any modifications to handsets or devices. It will be an operator with global coverage using low-level satellites instead of conventional telephone antennas anchored on the ground, after it has secured the licenses.
The move provides an insight into the role of Starlink’s network in the future, which is becoming increasingly oversized after upgrading the first version of its satellites to a second, much more powerful version, called V2 mini, still designed to fit on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets, and with the next larger version, V2, planned for launch as soon as they begin to use the much larger Starship rockets systematically.
Starlink’s satellite launches are used by SpaceX as a way of filling the capacity of its rockets and increasethe number of lift-offs, which is essential to obtain the economies of scale that are fundamental to the development of the company’s strategy: only a company that carries out dozens of launches each year can plan and create rockets with reusable components, or keep reducing costs. Starlink is vital to the SpaceX project, contributing to those crucial economies of scale and reducing costs to the point of becoming the cheapest provider of orbital launch or space transportation services by several orders of magnitude. This is what makes it possible to build a global leader in telecommunications.
The first connectivity service was based on a fixed antenna in areas with poor or zero coverage (either…
