The satellite internet service Starlink is seeking approval to facilitate 911 calls from wilderness areas to help improve search and rescue efforts and reduce deaths.
Elon Musk’s satellite constellation has served a variety of publicized uses, like giving Ukrainians the ability to communicate during wartime. The most recent is a partnership between Starlink and T-Mobile seeking FCC regulatory approval for a direct-to-cellular service that would allow those deep in the mountains and forests to reach emergency services.
“SpaceX Starlink will provide emergency services access for mobile phones for people in distress for free,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
“This applies worldwide, subject to approval by country governments. Can’t have a situation where someone dies because they forgot, or were unable to pay for it.”
Direct-to-cellular functions would have a greater scope than just emergencies. Speaking about their application to the FCC, the chairwoman of the regulatory agency referred to it as the beginning of the “Single-network future” which she described as one in which the user “won’t need to think about what network, where, and what services are available; connections will just work everywhere, all the time.”
According to Newsweek, Musk’s proposed service aims to close mobile “dead zones” by providing extra coverage from space using T-Mobile’s PCS G Block spectrum. Wilderness areas, correctly, don’t contain terrestrial towers, but Musk’s satellites could offer service to these vast spaces if a lost hiker, explorer, or sportsman needed them.
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The network wouldn’t be beamed down into the area via electromagnetic waves. Instead, the phone would reach space, and the satellites would bounce their call to emergency services.
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