TL;DR
- T-Mobile and Starlink recently began accepting sign-ups to beta test their satellite messaging service.
- Early invitations have now been spotted going out to users who expressed their interest.
- The carrier is still accepting registrations, so get your name in now.
When it comes to wireless networks, there are two big factors we value beyond any others: speed and availability. 5G already has a solid handle on the speed side of that, but when it comes to having access no matter where we wander, it’s hard to beat satellite connectivity. These days, satellite support on smartphones is still in its infancy, but projects from big players like T-Mobile and Starlink have promised to start pushing it into the mainstream. Right now some lucky smartphone users are getting ready for their first taste of satellite access, as T-Mobile begins distributing invitations.
Interested T-Mobile subscriber have been able to register their interest in Starlink service since earlier this month, hoping to get a spot in T-Mobile’s beta test. While it won’t work with every phone, at least the messaging service will be free during this testing period — a situation that you absolutely should not expect to last. The beta’s not supposed to actually get underway until early next year, but Droid Life reports that numerous users who signed up have already begun receiving invite links to set up T-Mobile Starlink service.
Invites have been reportedly confirmed for both Samsung and Apple hardware. On Samsung phones, a new “Satellite networks” screen now appears under system connection settings, where details of the messaging plan will presumably appear once this test is fully up and running.
T-Mobile’s beta test with Starlink will initially only support text messaging, though the plan is already to push beyond that with data and voice at some point. Data (depending on its use case) is at least a little flexible, but voice in particular threatens to cause problems due to latency — it just takes time to send your phone’s signals all the way up into space and back. Hopefully we’ll start getting a better sense of the real-world limitations once we start hearing feedback from actual testers as T-Mobile and Starlink’s experiment really gets underway.
