There was a burst of recent press about cellular service provided from satellites. This was probably prompted by the two recent hurricanes that have disabled terrestrial cellular and broadband networks in the southeast. I’ve seen speculation and discussion on Reddit and other forums where people have been wondering if satellite is the future of cell service and if the ubiquitous giant cell towers will eventually become obsolete.

The short answer to that question is no, but the longer answer is that there are a lot of reasons why this is unlikely to happen. The first is pure physics. Radio waves of all types spread over distance, and a cellular signal sent from a satellite will spread and weaken a lot compared to the same signal sent from a cell tower in your neighborhood. As radio waves spread, the size of the receiving antenna needs to be larger to catch the full signal. A cellphone does not present a big enough area to receive a strong satellite signal. You can easily see this by comparing the size of your cellphone to the size of a Starlink receiver.

Everything I’ve read says that there is also a major line-of-sight issue with cellular wireless connections. I don’t know about you, but the vast majority of my cellphone calls are made inside my house, a business, or a moving car. How useful is satellite cellular if it only operates optimally when you are outdoors?

The strength of cellular signal equates to quality. Speed tests show that my AT&T cellular signal is consistently over 100 Mbps and sometimes as high as 200 Mbps. Space cellular companies cannot match those speeds. My cellphone is consistently faster than the speed test results I’ve seen for Starlink home broadband.

Another huge issue is spectrum. Terrestrial cell companies use several different bands of spectrum to deliver cell traffic—all they need to do to add a new band is to get handset vendors to build it into future phones. None of these same bands of spectrum are available for satellite providers since the spectrum has been allocated to cell companies by the FCC through auctions. To provide ubiquitous satellite cellular, the space carriers need to find a lot more spectrum and get it built into handsets.

Then, there is a national security issue. Imagine if we moved all cellular coverage to space. It would present an attractive target in times of war. It would be much easier to sabotage a satellite network than the hundreds of thousands of terrestrial cell towers.

Finally, I’ve always believed in the old maxim, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. I think a large majority of people are happy with the way their cellular works. It’s hard to imagine people ditching traditional cellular service for something that doesn’t work as well.

With all that said, there is still a market for satellite cellular in the U.S., and probably a bigger market around the world. There are still many rural places in the U.S. where cellular coverage is terrible, or non-existent. The FCC is poised to tackle the holes in rural cell coverage using the soon-to-be-launched 5G Fund for Rural America. When those networks are built, the market for satellite cellular in the U.S. will be even smaller.

But even then, there will be a sizable market for satellite cellular in the U.S. Nobody is going to ever build cell towers to cover the vast wilderness areas of the country. Satellite cellular is going to be very popular with campers and hikers and folks who work in remote areas since it gives them a lifeline to the world.

Satellite cellular could be a boon to much of the rest of the world. Even countries with a lot of cell sites often do not have the same kind of fiber backhaul used at our towers. In places where cellular is the primary form of broadband, cell towers are often already badly oversubscribed. Where our cellular speeds are often over 100 Mbps, the speeds in many third-world countries are a tiny fraction of that speed.

I suspect the companies doing this will do quite well if they can make the cellular reasonably functional. But it’s hard to envision satellite cellular as a competitor to terrestrial cellular in first-world countries.