Satellite ready to integrate with cellular communications: TerreStar

Earlier this month, TerreStar Solutions Inc. announced it successfully demonstrated Canada’s first direct, two-way communication between a satellite and a standard smartphone. A milestone that CEO Jacques Leduc said is a big step towards satellite technology becoming “just another access point to cellular communications,” during a keynote presentation at the Canadian Telecom Summit last Wednesday. First launching its mobile satellite communications services in 2020, TerreStar’s services have traditionally relied on the use of an intermediary device to link the signals from the satellite to the users’ devices, like a hotspot. Now, Leduc says that as soon as next year, the company will be able to offer direct satellite connectivity to regular devices, a move he said he has been waiting for for a long time. “From the get-go, we always looked at as being part of the cellular ecosystem,” he said in an interview with The Wire Report. “We are the people back in 2013, 2014, who with the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standardizations to make our mobile-satellite service (MSS) spectrums integrated into the ecosystem of cellular,” said Leduc, explaining that recent standards set by the organization include conditions for direct satellite communications from smartphones and other devices. Devices with these capabilities are already being rolled out, with more to come. Leduc pointed to announcements from manufacturers who have begun utilizing the technology, like Lenovo Group Ltd.’s Motorola, Samsung Group, and Alphabet Inc.’s Google. TerreStar’s vision is to bridge Canada’s connectivity gap by operating as an extension of its cellular network, said Leduc, emphasizing its goal to connect “everybody, everywhere, on their everyday device.” Now the company is working to integrate its open network for commercialization, to allow carriers to interconnect with it on a wholesale or roaming basis, a carrier’s carrier. “In the same way that Bell, Telus, Rogers, Videotron, here in Canada, interconnect with Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, in the U.S.,” said Leduc. The CEO said he is also in talks with other satellite communications players, with the hopes of creating an association to further the ecosystem’s development. This association would have a collective voice in the emerging field and allow companies to partner together and offer global services, which Leduc argues is the most economical way to build satellite communications services for a mass market. Once TerreStar’s services from its geostationary satellite are up and running, it will look into deploying low Earth orbit (LEO) services, he said, explaining that as this future LEO fleet moves from country to country, companies in this proposed association would be able to support their own services through their respective spectrum licenses. – Reporting by Phalen Tynes-MacDonald at pcreed@thewirereport.ca and editing by Jenna Cocullo at jcocullo@thewirereport.ca

Satellite ready to integrate with cellular communications: TerreStar

News | November 13, 2023

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Satellite ready to integrate with cellular communications: TerreStar

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