One of the more interesting telecom announcements at the CES electronics show in Vegas was the announcement from the partnership of Qualcomm and Iridium of plans to bring satellite texting capability to many more cell phones and other devices.

We’ve already seen a few other announcements recently of the ability to make emergency text calls when out of reach of cell coverage. The team of T-Mobile and SpaceX say that T-Mobile customers will be able to reach 911 through a satellite sometime in 2023. Apple launched an Emergency SOS system for its newest iPhone users in a partnership with Globalstar, but the service is only available in a handful of cities.

Qualcomm is building this feature into its premier Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chips, so any new phone or other device using that chip will have texting capabilities. The company says it plans to eventually build the capability into other more affordable chips as well.

For now, Qualcomm has established a 911 service similar to the T-Mobile plans where people can reach 911 when out of the range of the normal cellular network. But the company envisions that cellular carriers will develop price plans to let users text for a fee. That would provide folks with the ability to stay connected while hiking in remote wilderness or during a sea cruise.

Qualcomm is in the business of selling chips, and it would love to see this capability expanded to other places, like built into laptops or new cars. Putting the technology in cars is a major selling point since it would enable features like automatically contacting 911 after an accident.

This first-generation product will be far from perfect, but that’s to be expected from what is basically a beta test. For example, while Iridium satellites blanket the earth, there are times when there is no satellite overhead, and a user might have to wait ten minutes for the next satellite. It seems this issue can be resolved by cell carriers partnering with multiple satellite providers.

This new technology opens up the possibility for people to have some limited connectivity almost anywhere on the globe. For the younger connected generations, this has great appeal. Most people I know with GenZ kids tell me that it’s like banishment to take kids out of reach of connectivity. But more practically, much of the world does not have reliable cellular coverage, and this can bring some form of communication to all.

I know people will read this and assume that the next step is to use satellites to provide data connectivity to cell phones or laptops from anywhere. However, there are limits of physics that make that unrealistic for a handset. The latest Starlink dishy receiver is 19 by 12 inches, and that much surface area is needed to receive the signal from a satellite. However, it’s not hard to imagine a hiker rolling out a flexible receiver to communicate with a satellite—assuming they bring along some kind of power source, perhaps solar.

I track telecom announcements of new technologies and products to give me a baseline a decade from now to see how various technologies performed. It will be interesting to see if satellite texting becomes a routine part of every cellular plan or if it withers on the vine like many other seemingly good ideas that the market didn’t embrace.