Cellular-Satellite Update (Qualcomm, Apple, and Everyone Else)
[Originally published Nov 10. Updated Nov 16 with Apple News]
After less than a year, Qualcomm and Iridium are parting ways — which explains why we didn't hear anything satellite in Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 at Snapdragon Summit. Shortly after that news broke, Apple extended its free emergency satellite service to iPhone 14 users.
This can be a confusing space (pardon the pun), so here's a quick primer on what's going on industry-wide:
At CES 2023, Qualcomm announced the ability to use smartphones to connect to Iridium satellites as part of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 series. Devices were supposed to appear in 2H23, and Garmin was slated to provide the link to emergency services. Qualcomm showed off demos of the system in the Nevada desert and again at its booth at MWC in Barcelona. However, nobody actually enabled the satellite connectivity in any of their Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 phones, and, less than a year later, Qualcomm and Iridium have abandoned it.
The rumor I'm hearing most often is that device vendors were not willing to adopt Qualcomm's Snapdragon Satellite because they wanted a standards-based solution instead. I suspect that there's more to it than that. Pricing is an open question for any of these services, and negotiating the service and cost structure is likely as much a stumbling block as technical issues. Apple is doing Emergency SOS via Satellite on its own, and if it does start charging after two years, it owns an extensive services platform with hundreds of millions of accounts for billing. Most smartphone vendors don't have this capability. Wireless carriers have billing relationships with their customers, so they would be a natural choice to act as middlemen, but they all have their own cellular-satellite relationships brewing (see below).
If a desire for standards was actually the issue restricting adoption of Qualcomm’s solution, Qualcomm can certainly build 3GPP satellite capabilities into its next-generation modems.
However, MediaTek has already been offering a standards-based cellular satellite chipset for the past year. Bullitt Group has built MediaTek's silicon into pucks and ruggedized phones under Moto and CAT brands. Those are relatively niche, but perhaps we'll see more growth now that Qualcomm is retrenching.
Note: Techsponential has been testing the MediaTek-based Moto Defy Satellite Link. It's affordable and the use case makes tremendous sense. It still needs better software, but it has been getting steady updates on that front. The Moto Defy Satellite Link won MediaTek’s inaugural Expect Incredible Awards; Techsponential was part of the judging panel.
The T-Mobile/Starlink and Verizon/Vodafone/Amazon partnerships are still extant but haven't produced anything yet. It is worth noting that the Verizon/Vodafone/Amazon initiative is about connecting network base stations via cellular, not connecting individual handsets. That's not bad, just a different approach.
The dark horse is AST SpaceMobile, which aims not at a narrowband messaging service but intends to provide broadband to smartphones via satellite. It's been hitting technical milestones with AT&T but it will need a lot more satellites in the sky to launch a comprehensive service. AST SpaceMobile does have MOUs with dozens of global carriers, so if it can get the hardware launched (literally) it could change how smartphones connect when outside of cell tower range. Worth watching.
That leaves Apple's Globalstar partnership as the cellular satellite solution with the broadest use today. It has minimal bandwidth and is designed expressly for accessing emergency services. This has already saved lives, as Apple is happy to show with moving video montages at iPhone launch events.
Emergency SOS via Satellite was originally pitched as being free with purchase for two years, after which point its monetization model was always unclear. Apple has now extended the free service for another year for iPhone 14 buyers. This suggests that Apple either plans to create a subscription requirement for both the iPhone 14 and 15 starting in late 2025, or Apple is just postponing the decision further because it was always going to be awfully hard to monetize an only-in-emergencies service. Regardless, Emergency SOS via Satellite is both the most available cellular-satellite system today, and is also limited both in scope and reach (iPhone 14 & up, 16 countries).
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