AST SpaceMobile has just proven that you don’t need a smartphone to connect to a satellite. The company, in partnership with AT&T, a major investor, just made its first satellite call using standard smartphones, specifically Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. AST called from Texas to a phone in Japan.
Now it is worth highlighting the following: Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 from a phone like Galaxy S23 it supports satellite communications (even if Samsung hasn’t done anything about it yet), but only via text messages. This system uses the Iridium satellite network and works just like the InReach products from Garmin and its competitors. You cannot use it for phone calls.
During this first satellite call, the signal originating from Texas was transferred from the Galaxy S22 Ultra to the BlueWalker 3 satellite, from where it then returned to Japan on another smartphone. AT&T’s indeterminate spectrum acted as an intermediary, so the phones themselves did not need to be modified for this to work. Theoretically, this can be done with any phone with LTE support.
According to the AST, this initial test also confirmed what we all really want to know: that BlueWalker 3 can support cellular broadband data rates. In other words, this test shows that it is possible to connect anyone, anywhere, even without costly cell tower infrastructure, even with unmodified smartphones.
In the future, this may allow people living in rural areas or developing countries to be able to connect to cellular networks.
Source: Digital Trends
