Telstra, Musk satellite deal to go live ‘in months’ as coverage war heats up

Australia’s biggest telco says it’s months away from launching direct-to-smartphone text messages with Elon Musk’s Starlink, upping the ante in a coverage war with rivals Optus and Vodafone owner TPG.

Telstra CEO Vicki Brady is on a mission to connect more Australians. Picture: Lluis Gene/AFP

Telstra says it’s months away from launching direct-to-smartphone text messages with Elon Musk’s Starlink, upping the ante in a coverage war with rivals Optus and Vodafone owner TPG.

A race has ignited between Australia’s big telcos to offer more satellite connectivity to mobile phones after Optus and TPG launched a $1.6bn network sharing deal this year, vowing to end Telstra’s “bush tax”.

But Telstra has defended its prices, saying it offers unrivalled coverage, particularly in rural and regional areas, and its deal with Starlink will ensure even more Australians have access to telecommunications.

It has been trialling satellite to mobile messaging with its employees across the country and since April has sent more than 55,000 text messages, mainly on Samsung phones.

Telstra technology advancement executive Channa Seneviratne said the telco was months away from launching the service to the broader public.

Telstra network engineering executive Channa Seneviratne.

“It’s going to happen before the end of this year,” Mr Seneviratne said. “We’re very obviously excited about the new technology. It’s a fantastic capability, but we want to make sure that we’ve tuned it as best we can before we give it the green flag to go ahead.”

At this stage, it’s for text messaging only. Phone calls and internet browsing is not supported and is likely years away.

Optus had planned to go live with its direct-to-smartphone text message via satellite offering – also with Starlink – late last year. But it said regulatory hurdles had delayed the launch.

Mr Seneviratne didn’t expect that Telstra would face a similar problem, citing the federal government’s pushing ahead with extending universal access to telecommunications to mobile coverage.

“I can’t comment on what the Optus issues were. The government has flagged their intention about universal coverage via mobile, and obviously satellite to mobile is the obvious way you’re going to achieve that obligation. So I think the government will try and clear any regulatory issues, certainly in Australia.”

TPG has also been trialling direct-to-smartphone messages via Lynk Global’s fleet of low orbiting satellites to eliminate “dead zones” across Australia. TPG sent a series of text messages last month from rural NSW to standard smartphones, with the first reading “Happy Easter” – a nod to the first text message Vodafone sent in 1992, which read “Merry Christmas”.

Elon Musk is doing deals with several Australian telcos.

But it isn’t expecting to launch the service publicly for several years until it achieves better consistency.

Mr Seneviratne acknowledged there were some latency issues with using satellites.

“It’s important to understand that it is a service that can be intermittent, because it depends on where you are, and particularly if you jag a satellite that’s going over. Just like, if you’re kind of on the fringes of terrestrial coverage, you might find you hit the send button, and then you get a message failure.

“If you’ve jagged a satellite … the other side, gets a response immediately, but other times it can take longer. And remember that we’re testing both mobile originating text messages and mobile terminating, right? And so we are still refining that, and we’re working with SpaceX to kind of optimise the performance.”

But Mr Seneviratne didn’t expect satellites to match land-based services.

“Look, to be honest, I don’t think from a sending perspective, it’s ever going to be as good as a terrestrial. If you’re doing terrestrial coverage, you’re receiving radio coverage from one or more antennas.

“The thing with the Starlink service at the moment is that they have a number of satellites in the sky, but it just depends on which one happens to be flying over at the moment. Imagine it’s your tower is moving at 25,000 kilometres an hour. Therefore, it just depends on whether you’ve got one and the beam is hitting you at that moment in time.

“I’m sure over time, you will have more satellites in the sky and again, it depends on SpaceX as they kind of roll up their capability.”

Mr Seneviratne said Telstra is yet to determine how the service will be priced. “The products team are working through those details in terms of the pricing plans and what that’s going to look like.”

Telstra chief executive Vicki Brady has defended the telco’s prices, following criticism from Optus and TPG, saying it wasn’t overcharging as she announced a $800m network upgrade in February.

“We have expanded our coverage to more than 3 million square kilometres, now reaching 99.7 per cent of Australia’s population. To put that in perspective, our mobile network covers more than double the area of Optus’s network, and around three times the area of the Vodafone/TPG network,” Ms Brady said.

Originally published as Telstra, Musk satellite deal to go live ‘in months’ as coverage war heats up