Xfinity Mobile and Spectrum Mobile now offer emergency satellite messaging services for select Android smartphones. Non-emergency SMS satellite messaging will arrive at a later date.
The satellite messaging service will act as a fallback when customers do not have access to a cellular or Wi-Fi network. It may provide safety or peace of mind for customers who live or work in rural areas, and it will generally increase coverage in maritime settings. Plus, it has the potential to save lives when natural disasters take down terrestrial cellular infrastructure.
Skylo, which recently announced a partnership with Verizon, is providing the satellite service for Charter and Comcast. There’s just one problem—Skylo’s satellites are in geostationary orbit approximately 22,000 miles above Earth’s surface. And, at the time of writing, only Samsung Galaxy S25 and Google Pixel 9 series devices are capable of connecting to Skylo’s geostationary satellite service. If you want to use the service without a compatible phone, you need to buy a satellite networking adapter.
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So, this is very different from the Starlink direct-to-cell service that T-Mobile is testing. The Starlink direct-to-cell platform operates in LEO (low Earth orbit) a couple hundred miles from our planet’s surface and behaves like an orbital cell tower, meaning that all smartphones, not just those with specialized modems, can connect to it.
But geostationary satellite connectivity has its perks. Most LEO satellites circle the planet about 16 times each day, which makes connectivity pretty difficult—you need tens of thousands of LEO satellites and a mess of Earth-based infrastructure to build a reliable satellite-cellular network. Geostationary satellites are comparatively simple. Instead of “circling” the Earth, they follow its rotation to maintain a fixed position over a continent or country. A geostationary satellite hovering over North America won’t drift over to a different continent, it’ll stay above North America.
This “stationary” positioning, along with the extreme distance of geostationary satellites from Earth’s surface (distance increases range), greatly reduces the need for an expensive and complicated “satellite constellation.” The initial costs and long-term maintenance of Skylo are lower than that of LEO solutions like Starlink.
Of course, distance creates latency, and geostationary connectivity is pretty slow. While an LEO service like Starlink direct-to-cell may be a decent alternative to terrestrial cellular networking, geostationary options like Skylo best serve as a “last resort” when more favorable connectivity methods are unavailable. That’s why Verizon, despite its use of Skylo, is still developing LEO satellite-cellular infrastructure for its network. (Comcast Business partnered with Starlink last year but hasn’t announced any super-ambitious satellite-cellular goals.)
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I should point out that Google and Apple already provide emergency satellite messaging on their newest smartphones. If you own a phone with this functionality, there’s really no reason to switch carriers. And, in any case, most carriers are working to implement satellite-cellular service—this is something that should be fairly standard before the end of the decade, although carriers and smartphone manufacturers may pursue differing forms of satellite connectivity. Some MVNOs may not use LEO satellites due to cost or availability, for example.
All Xfinity Mobile and Spectrum Mobile customers with compatible Galaxy S25 or Pixel 9 smartphones can access emergency satellite texting. Just know that the carriers’ satellite service is currently limited to emergency messaging. Satellite-based SMS text messaging will arrive in the near future, according to Comcast and Charter.
Source: Charter & Comcast via The Verge
