The future of telephony is looking up
There've been a few clues escape into the public eye over the past few months. These can be arranged to point the way forward for telephony.
In Q4 2021, some scientists published papers regarding their experiments
connecting bog-standard cellular telephones (just like the ones used by
millions of people) to LEO (low earth orbit) satellites.
The point of these experiments wasn't to actually do anything with the
satellite, but just to prove that an off-the-shelf personal communications device could
connect at all.
Fast forward to earlier this year: An industry production analyst noticed
that Apple was ordering satellite-capable processors to use in their iWatch
line. The analyst proposed that Apple was going to advertise "never get
lost" or some such and market their satellite-aware smartwatches to extreme
hikers or others who venture far off the beaten track.
These iWatches would only be able to send & receive text message via a
data trickle, as there are no satellite constellations available at this
time with the bandwidth for real-time voice, text & data services using the
satellite-capable processors in the wrist devices.
. . . and just last month, a license was issued to a company
who clearly intends to bring satellite telephony to the masses.
So anyway, I've been sitting on this data for a while now, but
f✱✱ked around for too long, and Bob Cringely has written a
really detailed article on what I've been blathering about.
So, without further ado, I give you Apple's Space Ambitions are
Real.
Tags: general-interest, technology
