Cellular Starlink Rival Skylo Teases Satellite Voice Calling for Phones

From PC Mag: A company that has been partnering with Google, Samsung, and Verizon says it can now offer satellite-powered voice calls on smartphones.

On Wednesday, Skylo announced it had completed its first voice calls via the company’s "narrow-band non-terrestrial network," which includes satellites from Viasat and EchoStar. "Skylo’s innovation and breakthrough yield a capacity for tens of millions of calls monthly per region on its existing, commercially available satellite network service," it says.

Skylo is among several players racing to bring satellite-to-phone connectivity to the market, competing with SpaceX, AST SpaceMobile, and Apple partner Globalstar. Currently, such satellite-to-phone services, including those from Skylo, have been mainly limited to text messaging and locating sharing, giving consumers a way to remain connected in cellular dead zones. But in March, Skylo's CEO teased an expansion into satellite calling.

Pulling off satellite calls is tough: Signals from Earth’s orbit are usually far weaker than those from cell towers. At the same time, smartphones don’t come with large antennas or the transmit power to sustain a long-distance link.

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