Tonight’s unveil: Connecting directly from your existing cell phone to Starlink satellites to start next year, for texting and voice calls and email. 2-4Mbps per cell.
Think of remote unconnected areas or natural disaster response. All cellular infrastructure can be out on the ground, but Skynet carries on.
T-Mobile plans to offer it for free with their most common cell service. The phone sees the satellite as just another base station. The technical trick is a JWST-size phased array antenna on each satellite. That is some gonzo-engineering.
At first, voice comes after texting because it’s asynchronous with intermittent coverage in the early days before the whole constellation is up. Your existing phone will work for all of it though.
Here is the SpaceX blog and video.
It was all part of the master plan… my post from 
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