Elon Musk-Led Starlink's Direct-To-Cell Technology Now Supports Continuous Video Calls, Messaging, Data With T-Mobile Partnership

Author: Badar Shaikh | October 02, 2025 02:01am

Elon Musk's satellite internet provider Starlink will now support continuous video calls, messaging and data services with its direct-to-cell technology offered to T-Mobile US Inc. (NASDAQ:TMUS) subscribers.

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Starlink Now Provides Continuous Data In 5 Continents

Sharing the update on the T-Mobile partnership, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell quoted a post by T-Mobile on X on Wednesday. "Today, we're so proud to support continuous data, video, voice, and messaging across 5 continents," Shotwell said in her post. She also thanked Starlink's "partners" for making the technology available to their customers.

Starlink Direct to Cell delivered its first text message in early 2024, and a few months later demonstrated video-calling.

Today, we're so proud to support continuous data, video, voice, and messaging across 5 continents. Thank you to all our partners who leverage this… https://t.co/yY786FZpYh

— Gwynne Shotwell (@Gwynne_Shotwell) October 1, 2025

Starlink-Enabled Smartphones

The news comes as Starlink has reportedly been in talks with chipmakers, exploring ways to develop smartphone chips that would directly let mobile devices access Starlink's service.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk had also recently shared at an event that there could be Starlink-enabled smartphones, saying that there would need to be "hardware changes that need to happen in the phones," to be able to connect to Starlink frequencies. He also added that SpaceX was building dedicated satellites for smartphone connectivity.

EchoStar Spectrum Acquisition, United Airlines Free WiFi

Meanwhile, SpaceX also recently acquired EchoStar Corp's (NASDAQ:SATS) AWS-4 and H-Block Spectrum licenses in a deal worth over $17 billion. The acquisition could hand SpaceX a major boost for making Starlink accessible to a wider audience.

Elsewhere, United Airlines Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:UAL) has received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to provide Starlink WiFi onboard the company's Boeing Co. (NYSE:BA) 737-800 aircraft scheduled to depart on October 15 from New Jersey's Newark Liberty International Airport.

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