At the end of 2024, I had a blog post on the first commercial launch of the Starlink direct to device service being launched in New Zealand with texting-only service and few technical details known. One and a half years later, and texting is not the only service anymore being available, and the service has launched in quite a number of countries such as the US, Canada, Japan, Chile and the Philippines. In Europe, the service is live in the Ukraine and in the UK. Also, a lot more is now known how the service actually works with what Starlink calls ‘unmodified’ mobile devices that support (terrestrial) LTE and know nothing of satellites. So let’s have a look at the current status in all these areas and document what works in September 2026.
Number Satellites and Orbit
Overall, there are over 10.000 Starlink satellites in operation at this time. Out of those, 650 support the Starlink Direct to Device (D2D) or Direct to Cell (D2C), as it is also called. These are in a lower orbit compared to the rest of the constellation at an altitude of about 350 km. To enable unmodified LTE smartphones to work with it, terrestrial frequency bands that are owned by mobile network operators are used by Starlink. In other words, the mobile device does not even know it is talking to a satellite. This requires quite a few tricks on the satellite’s side, and I will have a dedicated post on this topic, as it is both fascinating and slightly frighting what they had to do to get this working.
Frequency Bands and Bandwidth
Coming back to the frequency bands used. In the US, the 5 MHz of the PCS band (1.9 GHz) is used, while in Europe, O2 uses a 5 MHz chunk of their terrestrial band 3 spectrum in the 1.8 GHz range. Operators that have partnered with Starlink in New Zealand and Japan are using LTE band 1, i.e. spectrum in the 2.1 GHz range.
Signal Strength
One of the many ‘elephants in the room’ when it comes to smartphones directly talking to satellites very far away is the downlink signal strength that is received on the mobile side after the signal has traveled 350 km. This paper, to which I will dedicate a separate blog post says that neighbor cell search in RRC Idle state only starts when the serving cell’s signal strength is below -124 dBm. That is extremely low, well below what I would consider a loss of signal. So in other words, for satellite service to cell phones, a signal strength above -124 dBm is considered a good signal. Yes, that makes sense, but what kind of services and data rates can be expected at such low signal levels, even if the current signal is above -124 dBm?
Data Rates and Services
Interestingly, none of the sources I could find on the Internet give a definite answer here. So people on Reddit have said that they have seen 3 Mbit/s peak with average values much lower. That also makes sense, and I’m even surprised it goes up to 3 Mbit/s. From a service point of view, much more is now supported than just basic text messaging. While web browsers are not yet on the list, there are applications such as WhatsApp, which offer voice and even video calls over Starlink D2D in addition to text and picture messaging. It’s far from perfect, put it seems to work. Here’s a link to a report on PCMag with an embedded Youtube video. Other apps supported are Google Maps, Facebook messenger, the X ecosystem, Accuweather, Alltrail, Google Messages and many others. More links with details are an Ookla report here, and a review on backpacker.com here.
Supporting Devices
The list of devices supporting D2C is quite impressive, pretty much all high end phones of Samsung, Apple and some other manufacturers of the past 3 years. Here’s another PCMag link with more details.
No Modifications Required – Well, Almost None.
Supporting phones must have the latest Android operating system that has added support for apps to declare that they can handle bandwidth constrained networks. If an app declares it can handle such connectivity, Android will inform it once no high speed terrestrial network is available and the app can then adapt to low speed connectivity if it wishes to do so. Also, more about this in a separate blog post with more details.
From an LTE modem point of view, the Starlink D2C looks just like another network with a separate MCC/MNC. If a mobile network operator cooperates with Starlink, the network can be declared an equivalent PLMN for automatic switchover, or standard roaming functions can be used. For details see here.
Summary and Follow-Up
So here we go, this is my high level summary for what is possible with Starlink Direct to Device in 2026. In a number of follow up posts, I will have a look at how apps actually declare themselves ready for bandwidth constraints and how the air interface was modified on the satellite’s side to make LTE work over a distance of 350+ km.