Ubiquitilink may allow regular phones to receive two-way signals from satellites
Technically possible and many mobile phones are hardware capable. It means that it may be possible in future to be able to connect anywhere on Earth with just a plain mobile phone (and a few additional satellites of course).
The company says that most phones made in the past decade have the hardware required to connect to these satellites, but software modifications are required. This is because most phones are built around the assumption that cell towers cannot be more than 30 km (18 miles) away, since the curvature of the Earth generally prevents signals from transmitting farther than that. Once Ubiquitilink modified a phone's wireless stacks to account for the longer distance, it successfully connected to a 2G satellite in orbit.
Charles Miller, founder of Ubiquitilink, plans for the company to become a worldwide roaming operator that mobile networks will pay to access. That's a long way off, though — at least a thousand satellites are reportedly required, but the service would work with fewer in limited passes. For example, customers might not have a signal for 55 minutes, then receive service for five minutes (when the satellites pass over your location). That's certainly better than no service at all.
#satellites #mobilephone #Ubiquitilink
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Ubiquitilink may allow regular phones to receive two-way signals from satellites Satellite phones are typically bulky and expensive, since they require specialized hardware for sending communications into Earth orbit. However, it may be possible in the near future for regular smartphones to connect to telecommunications satellites, using technology demonstrated by Ubiquitilink Inc. During a briefing at Mobile World Congress in |