According to T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert, there are more than 500,000 square miles (nearly twice the area of Texas) of dead zones, areas not covered by any cell phone network, across the country. Many of these dead zones are in topographically diverse landscapes where cell phone signals are obstructed or in remote areas of the country. Not places you’d want to be if there is an emergency. Without a terrestrial signal from a tower the only way to communicate electronically, provided you have a clear view of the sky, is via satellite. This has long been possible from providers like Iridium, which currently operates a constellation of satellites, but only with a specialized phone that has a bulky antenna.

In late August, T-Mobile announced they’ve partnered with SpaceX to provide satellite coverage to all T-Mobile subscribers starting next year using the Starlink v2 constellation, which will be launched into orbit on the yet to fly Starship currently in development. This is quite extraordinary as this capability will work with existing phones, no special antenna required, effectively eliminating the dead zone. Other satellite operators, cell phone manufacturers, and mobile carriers are working to provide the same type of capability. The recently announced iPhone 14 has a feature called “Emergency SOS via satellite”, which uses a similar service provided by Globalstar, which currently operates their own constellation. Initially, these services will only support brief text messages for emergency use, but maybe one day you’ll be able to send a selfie from the top of a mountain or in the remote wilderness.