SpaceX CEO Elon Musk talks about ongoing talks with Apple. Their goal is to use Starlink satellites to enable emergency communications on the iPhone 14. Cupertino has not yet commented on the information.
Starlink is Now Negotiating With Apple
According to the billionaire, the Starlink team is currently in talks with Apple about emergency communications over the network in the future. He also said users would only benefit if their phones could use satellite internet for emergency calls, rather than just other companies’ cell towers and Starlink ground transmitters.
We’ve had some promising conversations with Apple about Starlink connectivity. iPhone team is obv super smart.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 8, 2022
For sure, closing link from space to phone will work best if phone software & hardware adapt to space-based signals vs Starlink purely emulating cell tower.
Available in the US and Canada
This feature currently operates at the expense of Globalstar Corporation. At launch, Apple announced the ability to communicate via satellite. The feature is supposed to provide communication where there are no cell towers, but so far we’ve only talked about pre-packaged text messages. It will be useful if the owner of the phone is in trouble.
This feature is only available in the US and Canada, and no global rollout has been announced yet.