Smartphone supply from the air: Deutsche Telekom is not waiting for Starlink

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Deutsche Telekom presented its strategy for mobile coverage in unserved areas at a workshop for the media on February 20. The gist of the half-hour presentation was simple: Deutsche Telekom does not currently want to connect its customers' smartphones in Europe to its terrestrial network via Starlink satellites, but is considering other options.

This is probably unexpected for many customers, as there is actually no way around modern satellites when it comes to connecting smartphones that are currently in dead spots to terrestrial mobile networks. In the USA, Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Mobile recently launched a public beta test.

Networking deserts, mountains and oceans without cables

The project is not quite finished yet. Pioneer Starlink continues to launch new satellites into low earth orbit (LEO) several times a month. Many other companies are working feverishly on similar satellite constellations, for example AST SpaceMobile in cooperation with Vodafone. Although this is expensive, the satellite swarms stretched around the planet like a belt illuminate virtually every corner of the earth. This means that deserts and mountains can also be covered, which will hardly ever have a base station for cost reasons. Network operators simply find it too expensive to lay cables for power supply and networking in large uninhabited areas. This will certainly not work on the high seas, and satellite operators may only get their money's worth by supplying ships' crews and passengers.

It therefore makes sense for Deutsche Telekom to use the Starlink service in Germany as well. However, this is not to be expected in the near future. The reason is simple, but the solution is not: in order to supply conventional smartphones with mobile signals, the mobile network operators have to make terrestrial frequencies available to the satellite operators. In the USA, this works without any problems when Telekom cooperates with Starlink. However, this is not possible in Europe and on continents with small territorial states because network operators use different frequencies due to different country-specific radio regulations in neighboring states. This is the case with Deutsche Telekom in Germany and Austria, for example, which is why there are brief interruptions in coverage when crossing borders by train or car when smartphones switch from one network to another.

Radio gaps in the border strip

According to Deutsche Telekom, the drop-outs are much greater with radio coverage from orbit because the satellites' coverage zones must not overlap and must maintain a safety distance of around 50 kilometers. In other words, the Starlink satellites leave an approximately 50-kilometer-wide border strip unsupplied. This makes the Starlink service unattractive for Deutsche Telekom in terms of cost and it is working on other solutions. High Altitude Platforms (HAP), for example, which beam down from the stratosphere, are being considered. Deutsche Telekom has announced a separate announcement on this in the coming days.

In the USA, however, the conditions for Starlink coverage are far more favorable. The country only has around 60 percent coverage with terrestrial mobile communications anyway, so the network operators there save a lot of money if they cover the remaining 40 percent in one fell swoop using satellites. In addition, the USA has far shorter borders in relation to its surface area than European countries. Mobile network operators that serve island states are also in luck: they generally have no direct neighbors and can use services such as Starlink without any special precautions. This includes Vodafone in the UK, for example. This explains why Vodafone is likely to launch AST SpaceMobile's satellite service there this year.

Extended radio regulation, a long way off

For the EU, however, we will have to wait for a longer process of radio regulation (possibly until 2028), which will bring a solution for cross-border traffic. And the regulators will also have to work out how the terrestrial frequencies used by satellites are to be protected from interference from neighboring radio services, and how satellite operators are to protect neighboring services. In Europe, both of these issues have so far only been regulated for operation on the earth's surface; in the USA, the Federal Communications Commission has already issued its guidelines.

(dz)