They launched 5G from space. They used an ordinary smartphone. This is the first such test in history

The Internet from space is, of course, nothing new. The possibilities of such technology are brilliantly demonstrated by Elon Musk and his company SpaceX, which is developing a network of Starlink communication satellites. Musk’s Internet, however, requires special equipment connecting the router with the satellites to work. In this experiment, only a smartphone was used.

Last year’s Samsung smartphone and 5G via satellite

AST SpaceMobile is the first 5G connection made via the BlueWalker 3 test satellite located in low Earth orbit. The same one that in April this year allowed for the implementation of a two-way voice connection using 3G technology. An unmodified Galaxy S22 smartphone was again used to obtain the connection. This is Samsung’s flagship phone, presented at the beginning of 2022, and which each of us can buy in the store.

On September 8, the American company, in cooperation with Vodafone, AT&T and Nokia, implemented the first 5G connection using such a standard smartphone. AST SpaceMobile engineers called Vodafone engineers in Madrid (Spain) from the Hawaiian island of Maui (USA). The connection was again bidirectional, but this time using 5G technology, which provides much higher bandwidth and lower delays, which means better connection quality.

In a separate test, using the same smartphone and BlueWalker 3 satellite, AST SpaceMobile also achieved a record data transmission speed of 14 Mb/s. In the era of fast 5G Internet in smartphones, of course, this is not much, but it is only the first step in the development of this type of technology. Earlier this year, similar experiments were carried out by AST SpaceMobile and jointly by AT&T and Vodafone, but in both cases they used the 4G network and achieved lower transfers (AST SpaceMobile’s case was 10 Mb/s at the peak).

Calls from dead zones. That is, 5G internet in the middle of the desert

What is important, test connections were made with the so-called dead zone on the island of Maui, that is, in a place where there is no cellular signal from the base station of any operator operating in Hawaii. In this way, it was possible to test the real operation of the technology, because the AST SpaceMobile solution is intended to work primarily in places where there is no cellular coverage and most likely never will be, because covering huge uninhabited areas with base stations simply does not make sense. And there are many such places around the world.

AST SpaceMobile currently has only one communication satellite at its disposal, but it is already planning to release further test objects, thanks to which it would be possible to cover most of the world. The company’s long-term goal is to create a 2G, 4G and 5G satellite network that would allow voice calls and the Internet around the world using ordinary smartphones.