“While not yet ready for full industrial service, T-Mobile Starlink was turned on temporarily to supply a critical communication option for those without every other means to achieve emergency responders and family members during Hurricanes Helene and Milton,” the carrier said. “Even without the total constellation in place, customers with capable devices were capable of receive critical emergency alerts and send and receive messages when satellites were overhead.”
T-Mobile said the Starlink-enabled service can be “rather more user friendly” than previous satellite phone services. The carrier said “users won’t must hold their phone up to look for a signal. Each inbound and outbound messages are sent and received just like several other message.”
T-Mobile also said there are parts of the US where it can likely never offer coverage from cell towers. T-Mobile Starlink will “mak[e] the phone in your pocket work in areas of the US which have never, and doubtless never will, have ground based coverage,” said T-Mobile President of Marketing, Strategy and Products Mike Katz.
SpaceX and T-Mobile announced their plan for satellite-to-phone coverage in August 2022. Starlink launched its first cellular-capable satellites in January 2024 and obtained Federal Communications Commission approval to supply service to cell phones in November 2024. SpaceX has a spectrum lease agreement with T-Mobile that covers the continental US, Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico.
SpaceX remains to be in search of a waiver of rules on out-of-band emission limits, saying the waiver is required to supply reliable real-time communications with voice and video. AT&T and Verizon urged the FCC to reject that request, and the FCC last month deferred its decision.
AT&T and Verizon each intend to supply similar service through deals with satellite operator AST SpaceMobile.
