The United States regulatory watchdog, the Federal Communications Commission, has given SpaceX the green light to operate cellular service from its second-generation Starlink satellites. For telco One NZ, one of a small cluster of providers to sign up for the SpaceX direct to cellphone (D2C) service, the official approval brings the launch date closer for its offering.
"This gets us one step closer to launching the One NZ Satellite TXT service," One NZ spokesperson Nicky Preston said.
“We’re delighted that our partner SpaceX has received US regulatory clearance to launch its Starlink Direct to Cell service," she added.
One NZ is now looking at starting up its Satellite to Mobile service, which was pencilled in for a launch on December 31 this year. SpaceX now has 300 satellites in the D2C constellation which continues to grow, and Preston said One NZ is seeing improvements in its testing on a weekly basis, as the telco fine-tunes the user experience of the service offering.
“We’re aiming to launch the One NZ Satellite TXT service shortly, which will enable our customers to send and receive texts on eligible plans and devices within a matter of minutes.”
Any telco that signs up with @Starlink Direct to Cell can completely eliminate cellular dead zones for their entire country for text and data services. This includes coastal waterways and the ocean areas in between land for island nations. https://t.co/dDCRceCRSk
— Ben Longmier (@longmier) November 27, 2024
FCC's approval is conditional on the space-based mobile phone service not causing harmful interference, which means power output has to be limited. Asked if a lowered power output would be an issue for One NZ's service, Preston told interest.co.nz that the telco didn't think it would be.
To recap, the service will initially only provide short messaging service (SMS) texting, with voice calls and "basic data" coming at an unspecified later data. The One NZ service will run in the 1800 MHz mid-band spectrum using the 3GPP 4G LTE mobile industry standard, whereas United States telco T-Mobile uses the 1900 MHz range.
Chile's Entel will provide Starlink D2C service for the telco's home country and Peru further north, along with Salt in Switzerland, Optus in Australia, Rogers in Canada and KDDI in Japan.
In New Zealand, competing telcos Spark and 2degrees are also testing satellite texting service, through Low Earth Orbit satellite company Lynk.
The Lynk service will use 900 MHz low-band spectrum.
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