Official Tmobile-Sprint merger discussion thread

[radem]

24 minutes ago, schmidtj said:

So how does this whole direct to satellite thing fit in with the way it works now? Carriers spend billions for licenses for specific areas. So now T-Mobile can offer service direct to customers without having a Terrestrial license first?

Starlink (1900mhz) for T-Mobile, AST SpaceMobile (700mhz and 850mhz) for AT&T, GlobalStar (unknown frequency) for Apple, Iridium (unknown frequency) for Samsung, and AST SpaceMobile (850mhz) for Verizon only work on frequency bands the carrier has licensed nationwide.  These systems broadcast and listen on multiple frequencies at the same time in areas much wider than normal cellular market license areas.  They would struggle with only broadcasting certain frequencies only in certain markets so instead they require a nationwide license.  With the antennas that are included on the satellites, they have range of cellular band frequencies they support and can have different frequencies with different providers in each supported country.  The cellular bands in use are typically 5mhz x 5mhz bands (37.5mbps total for the entire cell) or smaller so they do not have a lot of data bandwidth for the satellite band covering a very large plot of land with potentially millions of customers in a single large cellular satellite cell.  I have heard that each of Starlink's cells sharing that bandwidth will cover 75 or more miles.

Satellite cellular connectivity will be set to the lowest priority connection just before SOS service on supported mobile devices and is made available nationwide in supported countries.  The mobile device rules pushed by the provider decide when and where the device is allowed to connect to the satellite service and what services can be provided over that connection.  The satellite has a weak receiving antenna and is moving very quickly so any significant obstructions above your mobile device antenna could cause it not to work.  All the cellular satellite services are starting with texting only and some of them like Apple's solution only support a predefined set of text messages.  Eventually it is expected that a limited number of simultaneous voice calls (VoLTE) will run on these per satellite cell.  Any spare data will then be available as an extremely slow LTE data connection as it could potentially be shared by millions of people.  Satellite data from the way these are currently configured will likely never work well enough to use unless you are in a very remote location.

[dkyeager]

19 hours ago, swintec said:

will this work for service in a plane?

My understanding is the MNO carriers are the one who have objected to the use of cell phones in commercial planes.  I understand that it ties down too many cell phones at once, thus I can not see this changing. However this depends on how it is structured. Use of a different plmn for satellite service might make it possible for planes only to connect with satellite.

Private pilots have been using cellphones in planes for many decades. Far fewer phones at a lower altitude.

Edited June 4 by dkyeager
plmn

[iansltx]

On 6/3/2024 at 11:02 AM, swintec said:

will this work for service in a plane?

Probably not, mainly because the signal would get attenuated too much by the fuselage thanks to being weak to begin with.

Using Starlink to the plane and WiFi on the plane works super well though, and AFAIK Starlink requires airlines using them to offer the service for free with no captive portal.

[swintec]

8 hours ago, iansltx said:

Probably not, mainly because the signal would get attenuated too much by the fuselage thanks to being weak to begin with.

that is what i thought but didnt know if being 35k+ feet closer would help in any way.

[RedSpark]

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/06/t-mobile-users-thought-they-had-a-lifetime-price-lock-guess-what-happened-next/

https://www.phonearena.com/news/t-mobile-customer-price-hike-fcc-complaint-spectacular-fail_id159270

[RedSpark]

Big news.

[radem]

14 minutes ago, RedSpark said:

Big news.

I just had a vision of the captain of a submarine on the surface of the ocean with the hatch open trying to get a Starlink T-Mobile satellite connection on his cell phone so he can text someone to let them know the radio is not working.

[dkyeager]

Still not seeing any ULS postings for pending T-Mobile UScellular merger in Dane county Wisconsin.