A new firm says it can link satellites to ordinary smartphones

SMARTPHONES GIVE people access to each other and to the internet when they are on the move—but only where there is network coverage. Satellite constellations, like those being built by SpaceX, OneWeb and Amazon, will provide broadband access anywhere on the planet, but will not talk directly to existing telephone handsets (they will instead require small receiving stations on the ground, to act as gateways). By contrast Abel Avellan, the founder of an American firm called AST & Science, claims to have invented a way to provide the best of both worlds: satellite connectivity that works anywhere on the planet and yet is accessible directly, via existing handsets.

AST & Science emerged from “stealth mode” this week. It dubs its service “SpaceMobile”. Mr Avellan, a veteran of the satellite industry, says he has spent years devising a way to get satellites to talk directly to ordinary phones. The result is an unusually large satellite that is capable of picking up a handset’s feeble signal, and also of broadcasting directly back to that handset. The satellite acts as a relay between the handset and existing antennas on the ground that are connected to cellular networks. In short, the satellite is not an orbiting base-station, but a radio repeater.