The carrier has started accepting sign-ups for its direct-to-cellular service with Starlink
T-Mobile US is now taking registrations for a beta direct-to-cellular service that will start early in 2025.
T-Mobile Starlink is free to any T-Mobile US postpaid voice subscriber with a compatible device, the carrier said, and it will give “a historic sneak peek to a not-so-distant future mostly free of cellular dead zones.” It also promises that because of the level of integration with its network, the user experience is “expected to be much more user friendly than other satellite messaging services currently in market.”
The beta direct-to-cellular program will only support texting. Voice and data services are planned in the future. The carriers says that inbound and outbound text messages will be “sent and received just like any other message” and that users won’t need to hold up their phones to search for a signal—which is unlike, say, Google’s guidelines for Pixel 9 users who are trying to connect to satellite-based emergency services.
T-Mobile US didn’t specify which phone models would be supported in the beta service, except that it involves “select”, “optimized” smartphones and postpaid customers, that it would be expanded to more customers and phone models as Starlink launches more satellites. “In time, T-Mobile Starlink is expected to work with most modern mobile phones,” T-Mobile US said in a FAQ on the beta service.
“T-Mobile Starlink is the first major low-earth orbit constellation in the world paired with terrestrial cellular spectrum, making the phone in your pocket work in areas of the U.S. that have never, and probably never will, have ground based coverage,” said Mike Katz, T-Mobile US’ president of marketing, strategy and products, in a statement. “It’s a truly groundbreaking engineering breakthrough and means that we are one step closer to helping T-Mobile customers have confidence that, no matter where they are, if they can see the sky, they will be covered by T-Mobile.”
T-Mobile Starlink will eventually provide coverage for 500,000 square miles of the United States that aren’t covered by terrestrial wireless service, the two companies said.
The sign-up for consumer wireless customers is available here, and the beta is available to business and first-responder customers as well, with a separate sign-up here. In fact, the carrier says it’s prioritizing registrations from first responders; non-terrestrial network (NTN) coverage for emergency response or disaster recovery is seen as one of the major potential use cases for satellite-based cellular services.
Service as part of disaster recovery from Hurricane Helene was, in fact, the very first time that the direct-to-cellular service from Starlink and T-Mobile US was used. In October, the partners convinced the Federal Communications Commission to let them give the service a temporary test-run in order to provide service to T-Mobile US customers as part of the response to hurricanes Helene and Milton.
“Even without the full constellation in place, customers with capable devices were able to receive critical emergency alerts and send and receive messages when satellites were overhead,” the partners said of the limited service availability. “The system proved helpful for many that lost mobile and/or broadband access and provided critical data that will help further refine service.”
The FCC had put new rules in place earlier this year to enable direct-to-cellular service from satellites, which it calls Supplemental Coverage from Space or SCS.
Starlink and T-Mobile US said that they expect that when their direct-to-cellular service is fully deployed, they will be able to cover “well over half a million square miles across the U.S. and vast ocean expanses” which terrestrial towers cannot reach.
Starlink also noted that it already has a number of similar agreements with other mobile network operators, including KDDI, Optus, One NZ, Salt, Entel and Rogers, for direct-to-cellular service—and reciprocal roaming.
GSMA Intelligence put out its first quarterly tracker focused on satellite and Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) earlier this year. The report identified 91 telecommunications operators with signed partnerships with satellite companies, through distribution agreements. Those partnerships cover about 5 billion mobile subscribers globally (or about 60% of mobile users), according to GSMA Intelligence, and include both backhaul arrangements for mobile base stations (55% of deals) and direct-to-cellular capabilities (45% of the live or planned services).
