TAMPA, Fla. — AST Space Mobile said Sept. 19 its Blue Walker 3 test satellite that’s been in orbit for a yr recently relayed its first 5G phone call to an abnormal smartphone in a cellular dead zone.
An engineer with a Samsung Galaxy S22 phone near Hana, Hawaii, successfully connected with the satellite Sept. 8 to talk with one other engineer in Spain for nearly two minutes, AST SpaceMobile chief strategy officer Scott Wisniewski said.
Using essentially the most efficient mobile networking standard released thus far, the direct-to-device startup said it also achieved download rates of around 14 megabits per second in a separate test — beating the ten Mbps speeds it recorded over 4G in June.
“We imagine continued enhancements are possible on BlueWalker 3,” Wisniewski told via email, “and still more performance is predicted on our first five business satellites.”
AST SpaceMobile recently secured funds to launch these five Block 1 BlueBird satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO) early next yr on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Each Block 1 BlueBird can be the identical size as BlueWalker 3 at 1,500 kilograms, and five would enable intermittent connectivity for initial device-monitoring services.
AST SpaceMobile is looking for funds to construct more powerful BlueBirds that might be double the dimensions. It needs around 90 BlueBirds for a worldwide 5G service enabling terrestrial mobile network partners to maintain their subscribers connected beyond their cell towers.
The 5G tests used wireless spectrum from U.S. telco AT&T, which was picked up by BlueWalker 3’s 64-square-meter phased array antenna — the most important business antenna deployed to LEO. The satellite then beamed the signals back into Vodafone’s terrestrial network in Spain.
AT&T is in search of permission to lease terrestrial frequencies to AST SpaceMobile on a business basis in the USA.
Texas-based AST SpaceMobile and other direct-to-device players are also waiting for a framework from the Federal Communications Commission to manage the emerging industry.
Virginia-based direct-to-device enterprise Lynk Global launched commercially earlier this yr in Palau and the Cook Islands with spectrum from local telco partners.
Lynk currently has three pizza box-sized LEO spacecraft, a part of a proposed constellation of 5,000 satellites that might initially deliver lower-bandwidth services than AST SpaceMobile, corresponding to text messaging and emergency alerts.
On the opposite end of the direct-to-device market, satellite operators corresponding to Globalstar and Iridium Communications are developing businesses using satellite spectrum to achieve next-generation smartphones.
A panel during Euroconsult’s World Satellite Business Week conference in Paris last week offered widely diverging views on how briskly this market will grow.
Lynk CEO Charles Miller suggested the direct-to-device market could reach $1 billion in annual revenues in lower than five years.
Drawing from its experience providing communications to specialized handsets, Iridium chief operating officer Suzi McBride said it might “take 10 years” for the market to achieve this level.