What yesterday's announcement really meant was that Elon Musk now wants every phone, declares war on dead zones and how Tesla is going to benefit from this.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk together with T-Mobile and SpaceX wants to put an end to dead spots via its satellite internet. Plans have now been presented for Starlink to connect to smartphones. Calls and messengers should be possible anywhere in the world.
At a joint event between SpaceX and T-Mobile, the two companies announced that they will be launching a direct-to-phone connection with Starlink Gen 2 satellites. Elon Musk took to Twitter soon after to confirm that this same connection will allow direct connections with Tesla vehicles.
Existing cellphones will be able to connect through the service.
As new hardware will not be necessary on the consumer’s end, this led several people to ask if Tesla vehicles will utilize their cellular connections to make emergency calls and texts.
Musk responded simply, “yes.”
it will still be some time before satellite Internet really arrives on mobile phones. The SpaceX satellites currently in orbit are not able to enable mobile phone connections. Only the second generation of the small satellites should eliminate dead spots - provided there is a clear view of the sky.
Musk has already explained in part how quickly the mobile Internet from space will fail. The future satellites could reach 2 to 4 megabits per second per cell zone, which should be enough for voice calls and messages. If there are few participants in a cell zone, according to Musk, videos could even be played.
Armen Hareyan is the founder and the Editor in Chief of Torque News. He founded TorqueNews.com in 2010, which since then has been publishing expert news and analysis about the automotive industry. He can be reached at Torque News Twitter, Facebok, Linkedin and Youtube.
