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Comment by MichaelRo | Hacker News Reader

Let's be clear. When we talk 'satellite communication' I mean 'from the middle of the Sahara desert' or 'deep within Siberia' or 'remote location in Australia' etc. Absolutely no chance of regular mobile phone network around. The kind of stuff one could use when otherwise they'd be funked.

And for that I was under the impression that one needs expensive and clunky specialized phones like the Iridium ones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_Communications

Is this even possible without a hefty wattage and big directional antenna?

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It is! Voice communications currently still require an external antenna today, but there's a lot of movement in this space.

Text messaging is already possible on iPhones 14 and newer, on the Motorola Defy 2, various handheld GPS messengers (Garmin InReach and others), and soon supposedly on all unmodified LTE phones when Starlink launches their "Direct-to-Cell" service: https://www.starlink.com/business/direct-to-cell

Curious: Why does SpaceX say it’ll work on the Great Lakes, but not on the ocean? Don’t the satellites cover the whole planet? Are they somehow hibernating when traversing the ocean or…

Ah. I think I know the answer. They can only serve internet as long as the satellite can see the client and a ground station at the same time. Hence the Great Lakes will work, but the Pacific won’t. Right?

> Ah. I think I know the answer. They can only serve internet as long as the satellite can see the client and a ground station at the same time.

Aren't they making a big deal about some sort of laser communications mesh networking across the entire satellite constellation, though?

You would think that after apple did the same thing a couple of years ago on iphones, people on tech websites wouldn't be asking questions like "is this even physically possible?"

Try to see it from the positive side: GP is one of today's lucky 10000 :) https://xkcd.com/1053/

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