The biggest thing that they have to overcome is the super weak signals from space. You can send the data across, fine, but you’ve got to deal with super, super weak signals from that kind of distance.
Ya, it is pretty hard to talk on a sat phone. If you call someone, it’s best if they know what you are calling from bc of that delay. Not huge, but it can matter. I can’t imagine it will be different with direct to cell but they may use some sort of buffering to help.
The biggest thing that they have to overcome is the super weak signals from space. You can send the data across, fine, but you’ve got to deal with super, super weak signals from that kind of distance.
Ya, it is pretty hard to talk on a sat phone. If you call someone, it’s best if they know what you are calling from bc of that delay. Not huge, but it can matter. I can’t imagine it will be different with direct to cell but they may use some sort of buffering to help.
Would the delay be less with Starlink satellites given that they orbit much lower than existing constellations?
Ya, possibly, and this release talks about some new tech that perhaps will be used to handle that as well.
At any rate, they are only sending text messages so we’ll see!