It requires larger antennas. Starlink had to launch the V2 satellites which are larger and have new, big antenna for Direct-to-cell. They were meant for Starship, but that was delayed so they developed V2 Mini for Falcon 9. The version with antenna started launching beginning of year. My understanding is that are close to numbers for providing global coverage.
That's amazing, I'm having trouble believing that a mobile phone's antenna can talk to space, 500km away. Do you know what sort of bandwidth these will have?
But just to clarify, because I'm also having a hard time imagining this, an LTE antenna in a cell phone can beam data to a satellite and have it picked up? Even at whatever low kbps? That is insane to me!
There are IoT devices that can talk to geostationary satellites, and these are roughly 100 times further up (36000 km vs. 300-1000 for LEO)!
I have one that’s significantly smaller and lighter than a smartphone, antenna and all.
These satellites partially make up for the distance by deploying huge antennas, sometimes augmented by large reflector meshes that can only unfold in space.
As far as I'm aware, the V2 minis are different from the DTC sats. V2 mini just has expanded network bandwidth. DTC are a specific variant of the V2 mini with the hardware needed for DTC. Not all V2 launches, even now, are DTC variants.
It requires larger antennas. Starlink had to launch the V2 satellites which are larger and have new, big antenna for Direct-to-cell. They were meant for Starship, but that was delayed so they developed V2 Mini for Falcon 9. The version with antenna started launching beginning of year. My understanding is that are close to numbers for providing global coverage.