Vodafone will offer satellite video calls in Europe (and on all phones)

Vodafone will offer satellite video calls in Europe (and on all phones)


TelecomsVodafone announced that it had succeeded in the first spatial video call in the world using ordinary smartphones and that it would bring this service in Europe at the end of 2025 or 2026. Satellite communication thus goes from dedicated equipment, such as the emergency SOS The iPhone or similar functions, with current mobile phones, opening a huge market, which is not by chance attractive for all operators. To achieve this feat, which was actually accomplished last year by SpaceX, but not from a distant place, Vodafone has signed an agreement with Ast Spacemobile. The company, which has five BlueBird satellites in orbit, had already demonstrated the feasibility of the project in 2023 by making a call from Maui (Hawaii) to Madrid via the AT&T network. This form of telecommunications is considered by Vodafone as a “complementary” technology and operates by transporting the 4G and 5G signal from the operator via a space-ground walkway that connects satellites to the land data network. A bridge is a kind of satellite antenna (you can see it in the photo behind the director general of the Vodafone group, Margherita della Valle), and according to declarations, only one is capable of covering the entire United Kingdom, but We didn’t say how there are a lot of bridges. I am in Europe.

There will therefore be no need for satellite modems on phones: all devices will be able to make video calls with this service even in the absence of a data network. In this way, it will be possible to fill the gaps of the existing mobile network, by covering distant areas, in particular the mountains and the sea. For this test, the engineer of Vodafone Rowan Chesmer has made a video call in Della Valle from a Isolated mountainous place in the middle of Wales, where there is no mobile high speed. In addition to video calls, Vodafone claims that he will be able to offer a “full experience of mobile broadband”, with advanced speeds up to 120 Mbps, which “goes beyond the other constellations Satellites in low orbit which so far has only facilitated text messaging ”.

The video clearly indicates that a complete view of the sky is necessary, as for the satellite messaging services, but it did not show if it was necessary to try first to connect to the satellite (and how ). Of course, Vodafone is not the only one to be interested in this technology: Ast Spacemobile also has an agreement with AT&T to provide the same service to the United States, which, with only five available satellites, potentially limits the usable bandwidth . The red operator said that the service would be launched in Europe by the end of 2025 and that the coverage would be extended by the end of 2026 (we assume that they hear by installing bridges). No price has yet been announced, but we doubt that it is cheap.

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