On January 23, 2025, AST SpaceMobile received temporary permission from the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to make calls on the AT&T cellular network via satellites, bypassing terrestrial cell towers. The permit is valid until May 30, 2025. The company expects to connect up to 2,000 subscribers to testing the service.
Image source: SpaceMobile
AST SpaceMobile’s goal is to cover the United States, and then the world, with a satellite communications network that doesn’t require a special phone. A regular smartphone out of the box should communicate directly with the satellite, without contacting towers. Under normal conditions, this is not necessary and will be relatively expensive, but in the future, communications will be maintained in any corner of the Earth where towers have never been and never will be.
The company made its first call through space using a regular smartphone in April 2023. It was a call over the AT&T network from the US to Japan to the Rakuten network. Communications were provided by the experimental satellite AST SpaceMobile BlueWalker 3 (BW3), launched in September 2022. The company subsequently tested many devices with SIM cards, and all of them were able to exchange network information directly with the BW3 satellite, bypassing ground towers.
The estimated space of cosmic mobile communications in the United States
With its first call through space, AST SpaceMobile made history. Interestingly, SpaceX, which also lays claim to this range of services and was the first to deploy a constellation of Internet communications satellites, made its first call through space later. It is noteworthy that SpaceX received permission from the FCC to test space cellular communications in the middle of last year, but has not yet organized this process. Testing is expected to begin in the coming weeks. AST SpaceMobile has also not yet announced plans to organize testing, but it received FCC permission only yesterday.
The first five BlueBird satellites, packed into the rocket before launch
The check will be held using the five first -generation AST Spacemobile Bluebird launched in the fall. For full coverage of the United States, with cosmic cellular communications, you will need to launch dozens of companions, who, it should be noted, shine in the sky as one of the brightest stars. In the future, this will complicate the work of astronomers from the surface of the Earth in both optical and radiodiapas. Moreover, second -generation Bluebird satellites will become even more and brighter, which will only aggravate the problem of scientific observations. Whether a compromise will be found is unknown, but progress has its own price and will ask it in full.