LONDON, UK – FEBRUARY 20, 2020: Samsung tech brand leterring logo in Harrods shopping mall.
Samsung has announced that it has secured standardized 5G non-terrestrial network modem technology for direct communication between smartphones and satellites in remote areas.
The South Korean company plans to integrate this technology into the company’s Exynos modem solutions, allowing more 5G satellite devices. The system sends data via its non-terrestrial networks to low-orbiting satellites and to ground stations, which then contact emergency services.
Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) technology uses satellites and other non-terrestrial vehicles to connect previously unreachable areas. NTN will also be critical in disaster areas and powering future urban air mobility, such as unmanned aircraft or flying cars.
Samsung says its 5G NTN is defined by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP Release 17). The South Korean company’s technology will help ensure interoperability and scalability among services offered by global telecom carriers, mobile device makers and chip companies.
Further, for reliable communication with Low Earth Orbit satellites, Samsung developed and simulated 5G NTN standard-based satellite technology using its Exynos Modem 5300 reference platform to predict where the satellite will be and minimize frequency offsets caused by the Doppler effect.
Even though this is the same modem in the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro’s Tensor G2 chip, this doesn’t mean Google’s phones will also now have access to satellite connectivity.
Although, strangely, Samsung’s flagships have moved to Qualcomm chips this year worldwide, so, unfortunately, the company’s own devices won’t benefit from this new technology. Qualcomm revealed it’s working on its own form of satellite connectivity earlier this year, but it’s not live yet.
While most people are familiar with Starlink, the satellite internet service provided by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, fewer people know about Starlink’s new ‘Best Effort’ service. In short, Best Effort is an attempt by Starlink to clear its pre-order backlog by enabling service for people in areas where it’s already at capacity as long as those people are fine with “deprioritized service.”
Starlink holds a lot of promise for people in rural Canada and other countries where other internet options are unavailable, perform poorly, cost way too much, or all of the above. Some criticize Starlink for being expensive, but for rural users, it offers huge monthly savings over alternatives like LTE-based internet, which in Canada is typically slow and absurdly expensive (one Ontario resident told PC Mag that he could pay $300-$600 per month for internet over LTE with 15Mbps download speeds).
That promise is also why Starlink’s pre-order waitlist is so large. Starlink’s website shows where its Residential service is currently available — in North America, most of the eastern half of the U.S. and much of southern Ontario are marked as on a “waitlist” with expanded capacity coming in 2023. Best Effort is aimed at customers in those areas.
Map of Starlink’s North American availability. | Image credit: Starlink (screenshot)
“Best Effort is a service option offered to existing pre-order customers in areas where Residential service is currently at capacity. It enables typical internet activity with the understanding that Best Effort users will be deprioritized behind Residential users, resulting in slower speeds.
“Best Effort uses the same hardware as Residential and the monthly service charge is the same, but unlike Residential, Best Effort users will have the option to pause service.”
Starlink offered a similar explanation in an email sent to customers living in those service areas. Moreover, the email noted that Best Effort users will experience “notably slower speeds” than Residential users during peak use times. Plus, Starlink says Best Effort should work fine for activities like email, online shopping, or streaming a standard definition (SD) movie, but won’t work for online gaming, video calls or streaming high definition (HD) or 4K movies.
Best Effort users can expect download speeds ranging from 5-100Mbps and upload speeds ranging from 1-10Mbps, lower than Residential’s 50-200Mbps and 10-20Mbps, respectively.
Considering Best Effort costs the same as Residential Starlink ($140/mo in Canada), some might be frustrated with the offering. However, others desperate for more reliable internet might happily pay $140 for Best Effort while they wait for Residential capacity to expand in their area.
Plus, customers can freely pause Best Effort service when they want and getting Best Effort lets them use Starlink while sticking in the queue for Residential. Starlink says it will automatically upgrade Best Effort customers to Residential service at no additional cost when there’s more capacity in their area.
One of the more interesting announcements from Apple’s ‘Far Out’ fall iPhone event was the addition of ‘Emergency SOS,’ a feature that enables iPhones to connect to satellites in case of an emergency.
Although Apple said it’s working with satellite service firm Globalstar to power the feature, some wondered what, if any, connection SpaceX and Starlink might have to Emergency SOS in the future, especially given the company’s recent partnership with U.S. carrier T-Mobile.
According to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, it’s just been “promising conversations” so far.
“We’ve had some promising conversations with Apple about Starlink connectivity. iPhone team is obv super smart. For sure, closing link from space to phone will work best if phone software & hardware adapt to space-based signals vs Starlink purely emulating cell tower,” Musk wrote in a tweet.
We’ve had some promising conversations with Apple about Starlink connectivity. iPhone team is obv super smart.
For sure, closing link from space to phone will work best if phone software & hardware adapt to space-based signals vs Starlink purely emulating cell tower.
To add some clarity, the Starlink x T-Mobile partnership leverages the carrier’s PCS spectrum (in the 1850-1990MHz range) to provide coverage for texting and voice calls. That’s likely what Musk means when he refers to “emulating cell tower.”
Per Reuters, Apple has dedicated $450 million USD (about $587 million CAD) from its advanced manufacturing fund toward satellite infrastructure to support the service. Emergency SOS will be available in the U.S. and Canada starting in November.
SpaceX’s Starlink and T-Mobile are joining forces to connect smartphones to satellites and eliminate dead zones “worldwide,” although actual global availability remains uncertain.
Here’s the gist: second-gen Starlink satellites, which are launching next year, will be able to broadcast service using a part of U.S. carrier T-Mobile’s mid-band PCS spectrum (which is in the 1850-1990MHz range). More specifically, phones would access a “slice of connection,” as The Vergedescribes it, offering around 2-4Mbps total across a given coverage area.
Note, connectivity will be 2 to 4 Mbits per cell zone, so will work great for texting & voice calls, but not high bandwidth
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted the same numbers, saying the 2-4Mbps per cell zone “will work great for texting & voice calls, but not high bandwidth.”
All this assumes you have a clear view of the sky, however.
Per a T-Mobile press release, the satellite-to-cell service will be available “everywhere in the continental U.S, Hawaii, parts of Alaska, Puerto Rico and territorial waters” and is expected to launch by the end of next year in “select areas.” The company hopes that one day, it will also include data.
However, as The Verge points out, the system will use a traditional cell spectrum, which introduces problems with global access. On the one hand, using cell spectrum means your current phone will work (at least if it supports mid-band 5G). The downside is that T-Mobile doesn’t own the rights to that spectrum worldwide. That means Starlink would have to try and gather carrier partners in other regions with those spectrum rights to expand the system beyond the U.S.
In Canada, it appears Telus is one of the holders of PCS spectrum, specifically, PCS-G Block spectrum for New Brunswick and Northern Ontario it acquired at auction in 2017.
In other words, Canadians and others living outside the U.S. probably shouldn’t get too excited by the prospect of cell service from satellites. The companies are seeking partnerships with other mobile carriers to set up reciprocal spectrum sharing agreements so that customers can connect to Starlink, but it remains to be seen if any Canadian carriers get on board.
However, analysts told The Verge it might be easier for Samsung and Apple to integrate existing satellite connectivity into their smartphones. There have been rumours flying for some time that Apple plans to launch some kind of satellite capability in the iPhone, but so far, those rumours haven’t played out.
5G smart mobile telephone radio network antenna base station on the telecommunication mast radiating signal
Satellite operators Telesat and ENCQOR 5G are entering a new partnership to deliver 5G network across Canada.
The two companies will take part in demonstrations advancing connectivity, specifically focusing on industries in rural areas.
Telesat will incorporate a backhaul link to the ENCQOR testbed, a spokesperson from Telesat told MobileSyrup. This will allow telecom companies and research organizations working on 5G applications to test on both fibre and satellite connections.
“Partnering with ENCQOR 5G allows the ability to test and compare performance of 5G applications over terrestrial and the non-terrestrial networks,” the spokesperson said.
The program is focusing on connectivity in remote communities, agriculture and energy industries, and within maritime, aviation, and government bodies.
Telesat has conducted 5G trials using their Phase 1 LEO satellite with mobile networks around the world.
Since being founded in 2017, ENCQOR, a Canadian enterprise, has focused on creating the first corridor of 5G communications in Canada.
“This partnership will lead to collaboration with all the major players in the implementation of 5G and the academic research organizations,” the spokesperson said. “Telesat has ongoing relationships with the terrestrial service providers, operators and solutions providers. Telesat and ENCQOR 5G plan to leverage their respective relationships to develop best-in-class, end-to-end 5G solutions.”
I’m outside at my rural Saskatchewan farm, chatting with my neighbours who I’ve invited over to appreciate the night sky through my telescope. After exclamations and open-mouthed wonder over Saturn’s rings, and light that has been travelling through space for more than two million years to reach our eyes from the Andromeda Galaxy, our conversation inevitably turns to the pandemic, our work-from-home arrangements and complaints about rural internet. My neighbour casually mentions they’ve just switched to using Starlink for their internet provider.
I glance up and notice a bright satellite moving across the sky, almost certainly a Starlink, since they now make up almost half of the nearly 4,000 operational satellites and they’re extremely bright. I take a deep breath and carefully consider how to discuss the substantial cost that we’re all going to have to pay for Starlink internet.
I don’t blame my neighbours for switching. Here, as in many rural parts of North America, there aren’t great internet options, and with many people working and taking classes from home during the pandemic, anything that makes life easier is immediately accepted.
With no regulation, I know that in the near future, one out of every 15 points you can see in the sky will actually be relentlessly crawling satellites, not stars. This will be devastating to research astronomy, and will completely change the night sky worldwide.
A simulation of the brightness and number of satellites during a full night for 50 degrees north on the summer solstice.
Our model uses 65,000 satellites on the orbits filed by four megaconstellation companies: SpaceX Starlink and Amazon Kuiper (United States), OneWeb (United Kingdom) and StarNet/GW (China). We calibrated our simulation to match telescope measurements of Starlink satellites, since they are by far the most numerous.
Starlink has so far made some strides toward dimming their satellites since their first launch, but most are still visible to the naked eye.
Our simulations show that from everywhere in the world, in every season, there will be dozens to hundreds of satellites visible for at least an hour before sunrise and after sunset. Right now, it’s relatively easy to escape urban light pollution for dark skies while camping or visiting your cabin, but our simulations show that you can’t escape this new satellite light pollution anywhere on Earth, even at the North Pole.
The most severely affected locations on Earth will be 50 degrees north and south, near cities like London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Kiev, Vancouver, Calgary and my own home. On the summer solstice, from these latitudes, there will be close to 200 satellites visible to the naked eye all night long.
The telescope observations that are key to learning about our universe are about to get much, much harder because of unregulated development of space.
Astronomers are creating some mitigation strategies, but they will require time and effort that should be paid for by megaconstellation companies.
Unknown environmental costs
Starlink internet might appear cheaper than other rural options, but this is because many costs are offloaded. One immediate cost is atmospheric pollution from the hundreds of rocket launches required to build and maintain this system.
Every satellite deployment dumps spent rocket bodies and other debris into already-crowded low Earth orbit, increasing collision risks. Some of this space junk will eventually fall back to Earth, and those parts of the globe with the highest overhead satellite densities will also be the most likely to be literally impacted.
Starlink plans to replace each of the 42,000 satellites after five years of operation, which will require de-orbiting an average 25 satellites per day, about six tons of material. The mass of these satellites won’t go away — it will be deposited in the upper atmosphere. Because satellites comprise mostly aluminium alloys, they may form alumina particles as they vaporize in the upper atmosphere, potentially destroying ozone and causing global temperature changes.
This has not yet been studied in-depth because low Earth orbit is not currently subject to any environmental regulations.
Regulating the sky
Currently, low Earth orbit, where all of these satellites are planned to operate, is almost completely unregulated. There are no rules about light pollution, atmospheric pollution from launches, atmospheric pollution from re-entry, or collisions between satellites.
But companies are launching satellites right now at a frenetic pace, and the damage they do to the night sky, the atmosphere and the safety of low Earth orbit will not be undone even if the operators go bankrupt.
There’s no doubt that rural and remote internet users in many places have been left behind by internet infrastructure development. But there are many other options for internet delivery that will not result in such extreme costs.
With co-operation instead of competition between satellite companies, we could have many fewer in orbit. By changing the design of satellites, they could be made much fainter, having less of an impact on the night sky. We shouldn’t have to make a choice between astronomy and the internet.
But without regulations requiring these changes, or strong pressure from consumers indicating the importance of the night sky, our view of the stars will soon be changed forever.
The star-studded list of performers at the Michael Jackson tribute concert continues to grow with pop singer Beyoncé’s as the latest addition, reports Billboard.
Although the Crazy in Love singer will not be able to travel to Wales, she will provide a live satellite performance in tribute to the artist she regards as her main source of inspiration.
Upon the untimely death of the King of Pop in 2009, the singer, who is very religious, said that before each show, she feels his spirit watching over her.
A statement on the "Michael Forever Tribute’ page on Facebook said, “A unique, never-before-seen performance by Beyoncé of one of her favorite Jackson 5 songs will be shown at the concert.
“A lifelong Michael fan, Beyoncé really wanted to be involved in this tribute concert. Due to scheduling issues she can’t be there in person, but this performance is not to be missed.”
The concert will be held at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Wales on October 8. Beyoncé will be joining performers Smokey Robinson, Leona Lewis, Christina Aguilera, and Prince, among others.
