SpaceX, T-Mobile to Connect Satellites to Cellphones in Remote Areas

The end goal of the partnership is to provide voice and data services anywhere, regardless of cell towers, allowing areas not yet reached by wireless networks to get service. That would include places where cellular signals can’t reach, such as the middle of a national park or a large body of water.

“It means no dead zones anywhere in the world for your cellphones,” SpaceX founder

Elon Musk

said at an event at SpaceX’s facility in Texas. He said the satellite signal would reach phones in people’s pockets or inside a car and could provide basic messaging connections in places hit by a natural disaster.

T-Mobile Chief Executive

Mike Sievert

said that the company expects most current smartphones will work with the new service and that it expects the satellite service to be included free on its most popular monthly plans.

Remote areas can be expensive to reach with land-based wireless networks and contain few paying subscribers to justify the cost. Existing satellite phone services generally require handsets with large antennas and monthly plans that charge per message or minute.

The new service will use Starlink satellites as cellular towers and transmit directly back to devices on the ground. T-Mobile will set aside a slice of its midband spectrum for these connections. It will use the airwave frequencies in a way so they can also be used on its ground-based network.

Mr. Musk said the service would use second-generation Starlink satellites that will be outfitted with large antennas that cover swaths of land that have no service. The bandwidth would be limited, and it wouldn’t supplant existing ground-based cellular services. “This is meant to provide basic coverage to areas that are completely dead,” he said.

The plan is ambitious partly because it will use existing phones rather than requiring new hardware, and while grand in scope, it will begin with texting and messaging apps. Text messages are less burdensome on a network compared with calls or streaming data. The Federal Communications Commission recommends that people use text messaging in an emergency situation when wireless calls won’t connect, because in many cases text messages will work where phone calls don’t.

Reaching far corners has long been a goal in wireless communications in which weather, geography and economics can create engineering challenges and high costs. Cellphones connect to networks wirelessly, but cell towers themselves are generally connected to fiber-optic cable that can move large amounts of data more efficiently than wireless signals.

Last year, Google parent

Alphabet Inc.

shut down a project that used highflying balloons to provide internet access in hard-to-reach regions of the world. After a decade, the effort wasn’t able to reduce cost enough to make the business viable, Alphabet said.

Companies such as Lynk Global Inc. and

AST SpaceMobile Inc.

have been working to develop businesses using satellites to provide connections for mobile phones.

Space Exploration Technologies Corp., as SpaceX is formally known, has been pushing to broaden Starlink’s reach. The company regularly uses its rockets to blast batches of Starlink satellites to orbits relatively close to Earth, and it reported more than 400,000 subscribers for the internet service globally in a June presentation filed with the FCC.

In addition to targeting customers needing internet service at their homes, SpaceX has pursued deals with airlines and recently won the right to connect boats, recreational vehicles and other moving vehicles.

Write to Thomas Gryta at [email protected] and Micah Maidenberg at [email protected]