Apple and Globalstar Rumored to Announce Satellite Connectivity for iPhone 14

Re:Apple and Globalstar Rumored to Announce Satellite Connec... by lxgr on Saturday August 27, 2022 @09:03PM (#32624754)

Iridium uses the L-band; Globalstar uses the S- and the L-band.

5G phones support frequencies in these bands, and well above and below either.

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Re:Apple and Globalstar Rumored to Announce Satellite Connec... by jsjohnst on Sunday August 28, 2022 @08:44AM (#32627985)

Inmarsat, Iridium, Thuraya, and Globalstar primarily use L-band.

The early PCS allocations and a few later allocations (1900, 1800, 1700) are also L-band, but there’s good reason not to use them for this, they are already heavily in use all over. Satellite cells cover a large area and you don’t want to collide with a tower using the same frequency.

The 600-800mhz allocations are not great for satellite broadcast due to limiting characteristics of those bands.

So for the 5G bands that would not already heavily be in use and/or aren’t well suited to satellite use, that leaves us C band (3-5ghz), and K/Ku band (mmWave).

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