zlacker

The current incarnation of direct to cell is a partnership with cell carriers. I expect that to continue. It’s really hard to get the frequencies you need without that, and you really need a conventional terrestrial network for populated areas. I don’t expect that to change. The bandwidth needed to cover a populated area from space fundamentally requires more size and power than a cell phone can provide.

Even if it does change, the satellite operator is still vulnerable to this. They can get away with it in countries that are largely excluded from the international order, as we see with Starlink in Iran. But try it in, say, France and it’ll be a different story, let alone the US. Even if you flee their jurisdiction, they’re not going to sit idly by while you operate pirate data connections in their territory.