Categories: Sci&Tech

To enhance cell coverage and connectivity, Elon Musk intends to link wireless carrier T-Mobile with his Starlink satellite

The link between T-Mobile and Space-X was officially disclosed yesterday, Thursday, August 22, at a public ceremony held by Elon Musk at his company’s south Texas rocket factory. During the occasion, Elon Musk, the CEO and founder of Space-X, and Mike Sievert, the president and CEO of T-Mobile, conducted a public Q&A session where certain project specifics were revealed.

By connecting the networks to Musk’s “Starlink” satellite, this project will do away with the necessity for towers in places without cell coverage.

It is essential for emergency situations in remote locations that this new plan be utilised to send texts and photographs where there is now no mobile coverage.

T-Mobile chose the best option in terms of cost-effectiveness and efficiency by deciding to collaborate with Space-X rather than launching their own satellites or collaborating with rival companies, like Amazon or OneWeb, because Space-X has the most number of satellites revolving around Earth. SpaceX has launched 3000 satellites with a speed that leaves its rivals way behind.

The companies are passionate to launch everything by the end of next year, and almost all of the devices currently benign used by the company will be compatible with the new service, which will start with texting services in a beta phase beginning. Starlink’s satellites will use T-Mobile’s mid-band spectrum to create a new network that will be responsible to link those remote areas to the devices with cell coverage easily.

The next lot of space satellites are going to have antennas to connect the networks of T-Mobiles whose first batch is expected to launch soon. Those antennas can directly connect to devices powered by T-Mobile networks. Elon Musk said while answering one of the questions that;

“We are constructing a special antenna. They are actually very big antennas that are extremely advanced,” he said. “The important thing is you will not need to get a new phone. The phone you currently have will work.”

The experiment will be done first with only text and audio transmission only then eventually the video and other mediums will be added to the network. The special thing about this is the users don’t even have to buy new phones in order to benefit from the new technology and they will be able to use it as soon as it is released in their areas.

“This won’t have the kind of bandwidth a Starlink terminal will have, but this will enable texting, it will enable images and if there aren’t too many people in the cell zone, you can even potentially have a little bit of video.” He added, “We will no longer read about these tragedies that happened where people got lost and if only they could have called for help they’d be ok.”

Like everything Musk does, this is a very complex project and many people are saying that it is unnecessary or impractical but time has always proved Musk right. We have to wait and see what this new idea has to offer.

Muhammad Naeem

My name is Muhammad Naeem and I'm doing work with Pakistanwap.com. I do job posting on Pakistanwap.com. My last degree is B.A and doing MA from University of Sargodha.

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