A Brazilian Supreme Court justice on Friday ordered the suspension of Elon Musk’s social media giant X in Brazil after the tech billionaire refused to name a legal representative in the country, according to a copy of his decision.
If your phone can talk with a cell tower, the tower can work out how far away you are. With 3 or more towers they can determine your location by triangulation. When your phone talks with a cell tower, it identifies itself, including by providing your device’s unique IMEI.
Starlink is effectively a bunch of moving towers in space. If 3 or more Starlink satellites can talk to your phone, then they can also determine your position. It’s basically the same principle as GPS, except at a much lower altitude and over 4G/LTE bands, and the satellite receives signal back from your phone whereas with GPS it’s one way from the satellite to your device.
If they didn’t have the range for that you wouldn’t be able to connect with them to send calls, text, or data. Those are all two way communication and requires the satellite to be within range of your device.
Now, there’s something to be said for the current level of coverage of direct-to-cell capable satellites. If they don’t have many up there then it will be harder to triangulate - however they also move quite quickly through their orbits, so if they make multiple measurements they can get a good idea with just one satellite, and again the accuracy will only go up when more satellites are in range.
One article I read last July said they only had 103 satellites with that capability up, with plans to launch a further 300 this year (out of a total constellation of 6,200). However I’ve read other sources from last year about much higher numbers. I suspect the 103 refers to a newer version of direct-to-cell capable satellites that will form the commercial implementation.
As for the range of the signal from the satellite, it absolutely can reach your device. GPS is an awful lot higher, and with satellites in general you don’t have to worry about people being nearby to the radiation source (like you do with phones or even towers). There isn’t a risk of location or identification with a one way signal from a satellite, though, however if your device were to do something in response to the signal that could be an issue (eg [ab]using the emergency alert system or some sort of novel exploit).
Suffice it all to say, we’re entering an age where there is the potential for a lot of shit to happen, stuff that hasn’t really even been explored in SciFi or spy movies. In the late 90s we had Enemy of the State, which touched on satellites being used for stuff, but as far as I’m aware no fiction has explored using the satellites for two-way communication with our devices. People think of satellites being 600,000km away, not merely ~500km.
You put in a lot of effort when you didn’t need to, I asked for a source in my second comment, you just wrote a huge post with no source.
It isn’t my job to prove your claims, though I do appologize for my rude tone in my past comment.
I can see that the service isn’t live yet, it just says “starting 2024” and “starting 2025”, to me this reads like classic Musk “launching next year” hype.
Setting up a mobile phone network operating in existing mobile phones bands, broadcast from sattelites, has extreme legal challenges, especially since they don’t even list any partner from an EU country.
Untill I see see the system being indepentantly verified as working I will keep pressing X to doubt.
No worries, your comment was at least a little more than just a hollow “source?”, as you stated what you were unsure about, so I gave an explanation of why the connection would be feasible.
It also isn’t really my job to prove my comment, this isn’t a place where people write academic papers that must be cited, it’s casual internet conversation. We’re all on an equal playing field. You have just as much of an obligation to disprove my comment as I have to prove it.
If I give detailed reasoning, that’s a form of evidence, and you should at least provide counter-reasoning instead of just disregarding it because I haven’t spoonfed you a source. Not that it seems like you completely disregarded it, but you did latch onto the fact that I didn’t do a search on your behalf.
Appologies if I’m still coming off as a little hostile, it isn’t personal, this is just something that really bugs me about online chat - when someone puts effort in and then others dismiss it without putting any effort in themselves.
The service has been tested in late 2023 and proven working, at least while the satellites are overhead (at the time there were fewer that had the capability). Starlink also have partnerships with various telecoms companies in countries over the world - the technology will essentially relay from ground based towers on their network to the user via the satellites. They also have no issue turning the system off when they need to as satellites pass over territories, as they have demonstrated over various warzones. However, such a facility could easily be configured to turn on, and even without an agreement from a telecoms company there’s no reason they couldn’t be run unauthorised, like a Stingray phone tracker. This is the issue I’m raising, one that I don’t think anyone else is really talking about yet.
What do you mean by that?
If your phone can talk with a cell tower, the tower can work out how far away you are. With 3 or more towers they can determine your location by triangulation. When your phone talks with a cell tower, it identifies itself, including by providing your device’s unique IMEI.
Starlink is effectively a bunch of moving towers in space. If 3 or more Starlink satellites can talk to your phone, then they can also determine your position. It’s basically the same principle as GPS, except at a much lower altitude and over 4G/LTE bands, and the satellite receives signal back from your phone whereas with GPS it’s one way from the satellite to your device.
Do you have a source for that, I doubte they have the range…
If they didn’t have the range for that you wouldn’t be able to connect with them to send calls, text, or data. Those are all two way communication and requires the satellite to be within range of your device.
Now, there’s something to be said for the current level of coverage of direct-to-cell capable satellites. If they don’t have many up there then it will be harder to triangulate - however they also move quite quickly through their orbits, so if they make multiple measurements they can get a good idea with just one satellite, and again the accuracy will only go up when more satellites are in range.
One article I read last July said they only had 103 satellites with that capability up, with plans to launch a further 300 this year (out of a total constellation of 6,200). However I’ve read other sources from last year about much higher numbers. I suspect the 103 refers to a newer version of direct-to-cell capable satellites that will form the commercial implementation.
As for the range of the signal from the satellite, it absolutely can reach your device. GPS is an awful lot higher, and with satellites in general you don’t have to worry about people being nearby to the radiation source (like you do with phones or even towers). There isn’t a risk of location or identification with a one way signal from a satellite, though, however if your device were to do something in response to the signal that could be an issue (eg [ab]using the emergency alert system or some sort of novel exploit).
Suffice it all to say, we’re entering an age where there is the potential for a lot of shit to happen, stuff that hasn’t really even been explored in SciFi or spy movies. In the late 90s we had Enemy of the State, which touched on satellites being used for stuff, but as far as I’m aware no fiction has explored using the satellites for two-way communication with our devices. People think of satellites being 600,000km away, not merely ~500km.
That is not a source, show me the source of starlink running a mobile phone network.
I’ve already put a lot more effort in the discussion than you have. Is it too much for you to just search for it yourself?
https://direct.starlink.com
Thank you for the source!
You put in a lot of effort when you didn’t need to, I asked for a source in my second comment, you just wrote a huge post with no source.
It isn’t my job to prove your claims, though I do appologize for my rude tone in my past comment.
I can see that the service isn’t live yet, it just says “starting 2024” and “starting 2025”, to me this reads like classic Musk “launching next year” hype.
Setting up a mobile phone network operating in existing mobile phones bands, broadcast from sattelites, has extreme legal challenges, especially since they don’t even list any partner from an EU country.
Untill I see see the system being indepentantly verified as working I will keep pressing X to doubt.
No worries, your comment was at least a little more than just a hollow “source?”, as you stated what you were unsure about, so I gave an explanation of why the connection would be feasible.
It also isn’t really my job to prove my comment, this isn’t a place where people write academic papers that must be cited, it’s casual internet conversation. We’re all on an equal playing field. You have just as much of an obligation to disprove my comment as I have to prove it.
If I give detailed reasoning, that’s a form of evidence, and you should at least provide counter-reasoning instead of just disregarding it because I haven’t spoonfed you a source. Not that it seems like you completely disregarded it, but you did latch onto the fact that I didn’t do a search on your behalf.
Appologies if I’m still coming off as a little hostile, it isn’t personal, this is just something that really bugs me about online chat - when someone puts effort in and then others dismiss it without putting any effort in themselves.
The service has been tested in late 2023 and proven working, at least while the satellites are overhead (at the time there were fewer that had the capability). Starlink also have partnerships with various telecoms companies in countries over the world - the technology will essentially relay from ground based towers on their network to the user via the satellites. They also have no issue turning the system off when they need to as satellites pass over territories, as they have demonstrated over various warzones. However, such a facility could easily be configured to turn on, and even without an agreement from a telecoms company there’s no reason they couldn’t be run unauthorised, like a Stingray phone tracker. This is the issue I’m raising, one that I don’t think anyone else is really talking about yet.
Here’s an article from 2 days ago that shows the service is already operational for emergency calls in the US: https://www.econotimes.com/Starlinks-Direct-to-Cell-to-Launch-Free-Global-Emergency-Services-with-T-Mobile-1685521 That was the first result in the news banner in a search for “Starlink direct to cell”. Like I say, it really isn’t hard to find the information you’re looking for.