The satellite Direct-to-Device (D2D) race heats up

While the first civilian spacewalk enabled by SpaceX dominated the headlines, Thursday was also a busy day for D2D developments:

• AST SpaceMobile: The BlueBird 1-5 mission with the first set of commercial satellites was successfully launched. Each BlueBird has a sophisticated 693 square feet (64 square meters) antenna, the largest ever deployed by a commercial spacecraft.
• SpaceX D2D: After launching the AST SpaceMobile satellites from Cape Canaveral, a Falcon 9 rocket successfully sent off 21 additional Starlink satellites, including 13 with Direct-to-Device /Direct-to-Cell (D2D /D2C) capabilities.
• Lynk Global: Earlier in the week, the firm announced leadership changes. Charles Miller , Lynk 's former CEO and co-founder becomes Lynk’s chair of the board, while John Olson , a former two-star Air Force General joins as the new president of strategic development.

SpaceX D2D network status

As of Sept. 13 the SpaceX D2D satellite constellation has 180 satellites orbiting earth.  As observed recently in an article (link below), all satellites continue orbiting at VLEO altitudes.

The map and visibility chart above indicate that service availability will remain sporadic until a high density of satellites is achieved. However, we can observe that certain latitudes are already able to “see” one satellite in line of sight on average. Thus, it is anticipated that rural locations around such latitudes will initially be served by T-Mobile in the US -and possibly other MNOs in other countries- with good revisit rates.

The NCAT4 web application will continue to monitor D2D developments and -soon- incorporate daily orbital readings for the just-launched AST SpaceMobile satellites.

Learn more about D2D:

Two distinct D2D broadband architectures emerging

D2D: Not a winner-take-all market

The Non-GEO Constellations Analysis Toolkit (NCAT) is an assembly of easy-to-use analytics models to assess and benchmark LEO and MEO satellite constellations.

• Watch brief videos on YouTube
• Read use cases here on Linkedin
• Download the NCAT white paper
• Visit the NCAT info page on the Analysys Mason website
• Contact Analysys Mason