SpaceX and T-Mobile to Test Satellite-To-Cell Service This Year

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SpaceX and T-Mobile to Test Satellite-To-Cell Service This Year

By CircleID Reporter
March 14, 2023, 8:18 am PDT Views: 6,357 Add Comment

At the August SpaceX, T-Mobile event, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert answer questions from event attendees about its new Internet service that combines T-Mobile and Starlink technologies.

SpaceX and T-Mobile are set to begin testing their satellite-to-cell service this year, an executive of Elon Musk’s company confirmed Monday. Jonathan Hofeller, SpaceX vice president of Starlink Enterprise Sales, made the announcement during a panel at the Satellite 2023 conference in Washington, D.C. The service, which will offer space-based data services directly to devices on the ground, such as smartphones, is widely considered to have lucrative potential.

SpaceX and T-Mobile initially announced their partnership in August and have vowed to “end mobile dead zones.” To meet this goal, SpaceX has launched roughly 4,000 Starlink satellites to date, with the majority of them being the newly-developed “V2 Mini” satellites, which have quadruple the capacity of the previous generation.

Hofeller noted that the company is currently manufacturing six satellites per day at its facility near Seattle, and is “no longer manufacturing” its 1.5 series of Starlink satellites. Additionally, the company is producing “thousands” of user terminals per day.

SpaceX announced in December that its Starlink program had achieved over one million active subscribers worldwide. Hofeller said this number has increased to “well over” one million users, up from 145,000 users at the start of 2022.

By CircleID Reporter

CircleID’s internal staff reporting on news tips and developing stories. Do you have information the professional Internet community should be aware of? Contact us.

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