The boom in mega constellations has several companies planning direct-to-cellphone communications, eliminating the need for satellite terminals.
One such company, privately held Lynk Global, has filed nine patents covering fundamental processes for satellite-to-cellphone links.
“Four years ago, we created the technology and the underlying patents to compensate for the Doppler shift,” Dan Dooley, chief commercial officer at Falls Church, Va.-based Lynk Global, told Connectivity Business News. The compensation is necessary because the satellites are moving fast at 7.8 kilometers per second, he added.
Another of the company’s patents solves the time-range delay, in which a cell phone expects a tower to be within about 20 miles for 5G or 60 miles for 4G, but in fact the low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites are actually more than 300 miles away, Dooley said.
The company, founded in 2016 as Ubiquitilink, deployed its first commercial satellite in April 2022 after deploying demonstration satellites in 2021. It eventually plans a constellation of 5,000 satellites, requiring a factory capable of manufacturing 200 per month, according to two statements by the company.
Connecting to cellphones from space
Although some may doubt is the possibility of connecting mobile phones from space, “Now that you can show them that it’s actually working, that question has been resolved,” Dooley said. “We proved the technology with independent [mobile network operators] MNOs who have seen it.”
Lynk Global has signed agreements with several MNOs and “will be going to market either very late this year or early next year,” he said. The company will initially deliver “what we call low Erlang traffic, which is things like pre- and post-disaster communications and [internet of things] IoT.”
The company uses spectrum owned by local MNOs in each of the nations where it provides service, Dooley said at the recent Connect (X) 2022 conference.
Carriers recognize value of satellite
The satellite industry’s presence at Connect (X), including a keynote by Viasat (NASDAQ: VSAT) chairman Mark Dankberg, validated the industry’s role in a multimodal 5G future.
“Towers, by and large, aren’t the most economically attractive way to provide signal to the vast majority of the world, not just America,” Steve Vondran, executive vice president at American Tower (NYSE: AMT) and president of American Tower’s U.S. Tower division, said at the conference.