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Comment by simonw | Hacker News Reader

"Direct to Cell works with existing LTE phones wherever you can see the sky. No changes to hardware, firmware, or special apps are required, providing seamless access to text, voice, and data."

"Starlink satellites with Direct to Cell capability have an advanced eNodeB modem onboard that acts like a cellphone tower in space, allowing network integration similar to a standard roaming partner."

It looks like all that's new here is the website: the service itself has been announced for over a year now. Here's one story about it from March: https://www.engadget.com/spacex-is-getting-ready-to-test-its...

And here's a story covering the initial announcement in August 2022 as a partnership with T-Mobile: https://www.engadget.com/t-mobile-starlink-partnership-01253...

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I think there's some new info in the carrier list too:

  - T-Mobile [US] (we knew this one)
  - Rogers [CA]
  - KDDI [JP]
  - Optus [AU]
  - One NZ [NZ]
  - Salt [CH]

Wonder how it’s going to work if you use a mvno?

My guess: It will not be offered as a service.

For Rogers… they’re probably going to charge a lot.

Not surprised to see them signing on instead of Bell/Telus; Rogers has much poorer coverage in the sticks than Bell/Telus.

There's nothing new here to me. Heard about the individual announcements

That Loon LTE IP purchase is paying off.

I can't find anything public about Starlink purchasing Loon IP, could you share more?

This might just be a misunderstanding. I believe Loon is still owned by Google X, which changed its name to X Development and sometimes just calls itself X. Then of course you have the unrelated Musk company also called X.

Not a misunderstanding, mostly rumors [1]. When Loon shut down [2], they made a non-assertion pledge for roughly 200 patents originated during the project's lifetime [3]. Part of the platform was an LTE stack [4], and those patents aren't in the non-assertion pledge. The interesting bit is:

> To support ongoing innovation in the High Altitude Platform Station (HAPS) communications industry, Loon transferred a number of stratospheric ballooning and networking patents to partners working in similar fields.

Hard to say for certain of course without any public records with regards to an IP transaction or patent/FCC filings showing the transfer of patent assignees. Google and Fidelity invested $1B in SpaceX previously (2015), which leads us to the thesis that Loon died because of Starlink.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37806035

[2] https://x.company/projects/loon/

[3] https://storage.googleapis.com/x-prod.appspot.com/files/Loon...

[3] https://thenextweb.com/news/google-celebrates-project-loons-...

I think believing random comments off of hacker news without verification or source makes questionable sense. The name "X" isn't unique (which is part of the problem with it) as you're exactly discovering.

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