Updated July 26 with more details of T-Satellite.
When Apple made the surprise announcement that its iPhone 13 series was suddenly compatible with carrier-supported satellite connectivity, it was ushering in a new way to stay connected. The first network to support this, T-Mobile, has just gone live with its new T-Satellite service for iPhones and other handsets. And even a temporary outage hasn’t stopped the new service from arriving. More on that below.
T-Satellite works by connecting your phone to Starlink satellites (though, please note, it doesn’t install Starlink on your phone as rumor-mongers previously claimed).
T-Mobile’s CEO Mike Sievert said in a post on X, “Today marks a huge step in @TMobile’s mission to end dead zones. T-Satellite is officially out of beta and available to anyone who wants it — including Verizon and AT&T customers,” he exclaimed.
That’s an important point: subscribers on other networks can sign up to T-Satellite by paying a monthly fee. Note that Verizon and AT&T are expected to offer their own versions of this service, but for now, T-Mobile has first-mover advantage.
“With 650+ satellites in orbit, the largest satellite-to-mobile constellation on the planet aims to connect you almost anywhere you can see the sky. It’s already helping save lives during disasters and providing an extra level of safety for those who love to explore the great outdoors,” Sievert goes on.
The service is available for compatible handsets, and that includes most current Android phones as well as all iPhones from iPhone 13 onwards.
It went live on Wednesday, July 23, right on schedule — though had already been offered to customers impacted by the recent floods in Texas — and the new service has been called a game-changer because, unlike rival satellite options, including Apple’s own Globalstar service, it doesn’t require users to point their phone at the satellite. It works just like regular cell connections do, even in your pocket.
The next day, Thursday, July 24, Starlink experienced an outage for more than two hours, with full service more or less restored by 5 p.m. Pacific the same day. “The outage was due to failure of key internal software services that operate the core network,” Starlink’s VP of engineering Michael Nicolls said on X.
Not much more is known now, though it’s believed it affected tens of thousands of people, some of whom could have been T-Satellite users. By Friday, July 26, SpaceX, which runs Starlink, was searching for the root cause of the issue. Users in the U.S. and Europe were affected and Downdetector, the crowd-sourced outage tracker claims that as many as 61,000 people reported issues.
It even affected Ukraine, where combat operations saw the service go down. The cause, it was speculated, could have been a botched software update, a cyberattack or some other kind of glitch.
If T-Mobile is your carrier and you have the Experience Beyond service, you get this new capability included. Others, including AT&T and Verizon customers, can access the service for $10 per month. The T-Mobile satellite service is limited to texting with iMessage and SMS, and data is not supported, though more capabilities may follow.
The T-Satellite service means that if you are outside the regular cellular network, your phone is able to remain connected via satellite, for text messages on compatible iPhones and Android handsets. More services will be added in due course but already other features are available to Android users, including multimedia messaging, picture messaging, and short audio clips.
For now, this is the beginning of a new way to stay in touch wherever you are, even if your phone is in your pocket.
