“Such signal, much wow”: Starlink’s first texts via “cellphone towers in space”

SpaceX is showing off the first text messages sent between T-Mobile phones via one of Starlink's low Earth orbit satellites. "On Monday, January 8, the Starlink team successfully sent and received our first text messages using T-Mobile network spectrum through one of our new Direct to Cell satellites launched six days prior," a Starlink update said.

SpaceX last week launched the first six Starlink satellites that can provide cellular transmissions to standard LTE phones. The service from what Starlink calls "cellphone towers in space" is expected to provide text messaging sometime this year for customers of T-Mobile in the US and carriers in other countries, with voice and data service beginning sometime in 2025.

SpaceX posted a photo of the two iPhones that exchanged the texts, which included messages such as "Such signal" and "Much wow." The process that allowed those texts to be sent was pretty complicated, Starlink said. "Connecting cell phones to satellites has several major challenges to overcome," Starlink said. "For example, in terrestrial networks cell towers are stationary, but in a satellite network they move at tens of thousands of miles per hour relative to users on Earth. This requires seamless handoffs between satellites and accommodations for factors like Doppler shift and timing delays that challenge phone to space communications."