Tech companies like Apple often launch products with huge fanfare but too often these days disappoint, in what is now a saturated market for many products. Even as a lifelong Apple 'fanboy', I must confess to buying alternative earphones this year because despite the 'amazing' new AirPods, I couldn't help but think "these are the same design as last year, and the year before that, and in fact the same design as when they were launched back in 2016".
Every now and again though, a new product is launched where you think wow, that looks genuinely amazing. But rarer still, Apple occasionally launches a product which will change an entire industry. The unimaginative look and think "meh, it's ok, but they're entering a stale industry which nobody likes because it's so expensive, offers very little, to a limited few, and it'll go nowhere." That's what I'm talking about today.
Let me introduce Globalstar, the stalled industry of consumer satellite communication, and why the whole industry is about to change.
For those not in the know, right over your head now, are thousands of small satellites providing everything from television services to military intelligence around the world. In addition to that though, are a smaller number of satellites providing Global Positioning Services (GPS) and emergency two way communication with outdoor adventurers to summon a helicopter when you fall down a ravine and break a leg. Companies such as Globalstar, Iridium and Thuraya, for example.
The SpotX Globalstar personal communicator
Sound's great, what's the problem?
Back in the 90's, nobody really travelled with a mobile phone. Before Digital handsets, few, if any, mobile phones worked outside your home territory. Satellite communication was on the up because it is, by nature, global. Satellite communication handsets were developed rapidly and although by today's standards are bulky and cumbersome, back in the 90's they were equally as slick as any mobile phone. I should know, I own two.
The problem is that digital handsets arrived, and with them, global connection alliances. You could step off a plane anywhere in the world and your digital mobile would work, just like at home, and for way less money than using a satellite phone and with significantly faster connection and data usage speeds.
Where we are now is that due to the rapid growth of global mobile phones, growth in consumer satellite communication has by comparison stalled. If you take my Iridium satellite mobile, for example, it costs £65 a month for just ten minutes of calling time. Its data speeds are limited to a crawling 24kbps per second and every one of those seconds is billable - even if it never downloads a single bit of data!
So why bother? I hear you ask. Well, spending a lot of time hiking around the Canary Islands, I'm frequently 'off grid' ie no mobile connection. Hiking in the Canaries is relatively trouble free but those steep hills and the deep ravines of the Barranco's does occasionally land people in trouble. Out there, if you're in trouble, you're in trouble.
So that's it? Those expensive handsets that cost a fortune to buy and run are only useful for extreme situations? Basically, yes.
But all of this is about to change, and poses the biggest threat to domestic mobile service providers in a generation.
So what's at play here?
Well, take my Garmin GPS device here. It's clever in that using GPS it can guide me pretty much wherever I am in the world and I can summon assistance from Garmin's emergency response centre in Texas. At any time of the day, I hit the SOS button and enter into two way texting with their crisis management team and bingo, they get a helicopter to me (insurance for such events is recommended - helicopter rescues aren't cheap!)
Garmin's GPS devices use the most advanced of the consumer satellite networks, Iridium. But when we say advanced, we're talking 60 seconds to connect a voice call, 2.4kbps max data speeds and yes, still, £35 a month for 40 text messages. It's slow, cumbersome and expensive. And outdated.
But it does have near global coverage.
My Garmin 66i GPS connected via Iridium
Iridium to date, has developed a network of 'low earth orbit' satellites that sit about 900 miles above Earth and constantly orbit the planet creating a near global coverage. It's a well respected service that in my experience is superbly reliable.
Then you take Globalstar, owner of Spot X - similar to the Garmin GPS. The problem with Globalstar, as any Spot X user would tell you, is that coverage is far more limited. Globalstar has 48 'Low Earth Orbit' (LEO) satellites versus Iridium's 75. I tried Spot X once and hated it. It was slow and actually unreliable.
Finally, Thuraya, who power my pay-as-you-go satellite phone. Thuraya's network is different in that it has 'geosynchronous' satellites that sit in a fixed position some 22,000 miles above Earth and due to that distance can cover entire continents with just two satellites. But that distance results in even greater call connection times. That said, Thuraya can offer much faster data speeds being the newest of the networks.
Satellite coverage of Earth by company. Left Globalstar, Centre Thuraya, Right Iridium
Elon Musk's Starlink
Possibly what has made companies such as Apple sit up and think, is that of Starlink. For years, it had been rumoured that devices such as Apple's iPhone and high end Android handsets such as the Samsung S-series would eventually be able to communicate with satellite networks. But nobody quite knew how because the existing satellite networks were, frankly, dismal.
But using a series of Low Earth Orbit satellites, 3,300 of them in fact, is Elon Musk-backed Starlink. With its brand new technology, Starlink offers data speeds of up to 500mbps and with voice calls on the horizon, Apple will have been more than curious about Starlink's intentions - and Iridium is probably nervous.
T-Mobile have formed a strategic partnership with Starlink to cover 'dead spots' across the US but it's unlikely that the story will end there for either T-Mobile or Starlink.
Apple had to act.
So where does Apple fit in?
This is where things get very spicy indeed. Apple has recently invested $500m in Globalstar and done a deal for Apple's iPhone 14 to use Globalstar's network to provide emergency response connection where a user finds themself out of standard domestic cellular coverage and facing a range of emergency situations.
This is the first time that any cellular device has had satellite connection capability. Apple being Apple though, they haven't done this for charitable purposes.
You see, the challenge for any cellular handset manufacturer is two fold. Not only do they have to build one handset capable of connecting to hundreds of different frequencies (the cellular networks were developed on different bands around the world - think railway gauges and how they differ), Apple also has to deal directly with cellular service providers - an equal number of companies all wanting a slice of the dollar.
Satellite communication may be cumbersome and expensive now, but so is maintaining all those domestic cellular towers - the number of people involved in building and maintaining cellular networks is terrifying - it's costly and it's outdated. So what does Apple do? Well..
Apple chose Globalstar as it has the most to gain for both companies. On the one hand, Globalstar is currently under valued by book price and is seen as a distant second to Iridium. It needs eye watering levels of investment to compete with its rival. Apple has access to that sort of money. In the fullness of time, what you'll probably see is Apple buying Globalstar outright and in a way that only Apple can, create a satellite network that not only equals what we see in today's 5G domestic capability, but surpass it in terms of truly global coverage and blazing fast data speeds. Apple gains access into the existing domestic satellite market, drags it into the modern era and for Apple specifically, they can part ways with all those different frequencies and more importantly, bid farewell to those domestic service providers. For Apple and its customer base, its a huge win - global coverage with just one in-house network provider.
The cell service providers are finished. However you look at it, communicating whilst travelling is about to get a lot easier for everyone involved.
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