Rakuten Mobile has declared it will provide a satellite-to-mobile (sat2phone) broadband service in Japan with AST SpaceMobile (NASDAQ: ASTS) in 2026. Rakuten Mobile Chairman Mickey Mikitani and AST SpaceMobile Chairman and CEO Abel Avellan spoke about their vision for the project as well as mid- to long-term strategy, at a press conference.
In April 2023, Rakuten and AST SpaceMobile, Inc. completed what they said was the first-ever two-way voice calls, directly to unmodified smartphones using the BlueWalker 3 satellite. AST SpaceMobile has stated its mission is to provide 2G, 3G, 4G LTE and 5G cellular broadband services to the nearly 50 percent of the global population who remain unconnected.
Rakuten is not alone in its quest. Last December, Rogers Communications Inc. (NYSE: RCI), and Lynk Global announced that they would introduce Sat2Phone phone technology in 2024, after conducting a successful test call between two Samsung S22 phones. In August 2022, T-Mobile announced that it planned to use SpaceX’s Starlink broadband satellites to bring connectivity to mobile phones beyond the reach of its cell towers in “dead zones” across the country, according to T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert.
However, showing the difficulty of the venture, Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) ended its Sat2Phone partnership with Iridium (NASDAQ: IRDM), according to Mobile World Live, less than a year after it was announced at CES after a lack of uptake from device makers. CNET called satellite messaging to the phone “The 2023 Phones Trend That Wasn’t (Yet).”
The problem, according to CNET, is the expense of providing the sat2phone service. Apple has teamed with Globalstar to provide an emergency SOS service. But it also funded the feature for iPhone 14 and iPhone 15 users to the tune of $450 million.
By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor
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