I didn't think it would actually happen this quickly since I thought it would take some time to scale down the starlink receivers to fit into cell phones.
Turns out they can just do regular ol' LTE right from the satellites and they're close enough for phones to connect?
Although one important caveat is that it will work wherever you can see the sky. So there will still be some dead areas where ground towers and starlink can't reach (though of course that's probably a very small portion, like maybe 5%). But, that seems like a very tractable problem, so I'm sure there will be a solution in short order for those situations. The future is rampaging forward!
To be honest, I think this is already the case for many Europeans, as there is almost always coverage.
There's also some hilly terrain in northeast iowa where you just can't keep a phone call unless you stop your car. The second you crest the peak you lose line of sight.
I wonder what it means for tracking a phone by tower pings.
The max power output is regulatory, but also for power reasons.
That's more about not going through trees etc. If you have a line of sight to a cell tower, what keeps you from connecting is mostly the radio trying to be polite and choosing not to talk to a cell tower that's more than some max time delay away. I assume for this they'll tweak the settings, and satellites are good for line of sight.