Brits will always have mobile phone & internet signal at home after tech breakthrough that beats Elon Musk’s Starlink
Brits will always have mobile phone & internet signal at home after tech breakthrough that beats Elon Musk’s Starlink
Share:
BRITISH telecom firm Vodafone has beaten tech billionaire Elon Musk in the mobile phone space race. The breakthrough will make the UK the first to connect calls to standard handsets via satellites. It means calls can switch between space and normal mast networks automatically.
![[Elon Musk in a suit.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/telsa-spacex-ceo-elon-musk-965271286.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
And users stuck in remote locations such as mountains or out at sea can also use the tech to connect to broadband internet to get a signal. Unlike current satellite phones, users will not need a special dish, terminal or more expensive handset. Vodafone boss Margherita Della Valle yesterday revealed she had made a call using the tech to an engineer in a remote mountain region of Wales “which had never had a phone signal”.
![[Illustration of current and new phone signal systems.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/JB_29_01_PHONE-SPACE_GRAPHIC.jpg?strip=all&w=618)
The achievement comes 40 years after the UK’s first mobile phone call — made at midnight on January 1, 1985, by Michael Harrison to his father Sir Ernest, the founder of Vodafone. Vodafone invested in AST SpaceMobile in 2018. There are five satellites it works with, allowing the firm to test mobile broadband connectivity directly to existing smartphones at peak data transmission speeds.
AST SpaceMobile operates the only mobile broadband network in space that works directly with standard smartphones for multiple users. And it means Vodafone is ahead of Musk, whose Starlink network has so far only managed text messages in tests connecting regular phones to low Earth orbit satellite constellations.
