The push for 5G in space has boomed in 2022, but there are many barriers to overcome before it can be broadly used, according to Lynk CCO Daniel Dooley and BICS VP Mikael Schachne.

Satellite company Lynk and BICS – a global communications platform company – recently partnered in efforts to expand mobile coverage to remote areas internationally. Lynk launched experimental satellites this year that have now been decommissioned providing the “plumbing” to move forward with their design, according to Dooley.

Lynk then launched its first commercial satellite after landing the FCC license, operating 2G and 4G, and has now scheduled the launch of two more satellites on December 18 – including the first 5G stack-bearing satellite – along with its plans to start commercial service in the next few months. BICS brings its internetwork packet exchange (IPX) network connectivity to hundreds of mobile network operators (MNOs) around the world to begin expanding Lynk’s nascent network.

The new race to space may be booming, but the actual buildout of a global satellite-run backhaul network is years away. “In the last five years: we invented it, and it’s very hard,” Dooley told SDxCentral.

“You've got [the] technical challenge, commercial challenge, regulatory challenge, the access to device[s]. But in the last 90 days, everybody wants to get into it because it is revolutionary. It’s going to change the way people can act; it’s gonna narrow the digital divide significantly.”

Among the operators looking to the stars, SpaceX and T-Mobile announced Starlink, but “they're going to develop the technology that allows them to – in 18 months – send a text message. Okay, good – we've done that for a year now,” Dooley explained.

And while Starlink satellites will provide 1900MHz spectrum helpful in the U.S. and Canada with T-Mobile networks, Lynk has invested in 12 bands of “globally relevant” spectrums – including 2G and 4G, he noted.

Dooley cited players like Omnispace and Ericsson leveraging new NTN technology to try and create a standard body as an important and interesting move, but one that will not allow for meaningful coverage anytime soon. “I will certainly be retired by the time that happens," he remarked.

The process of providing meaningful satellite coverage differs greatly from traditional terrestrial towers because the network itself is constantly moving. According to Dooley – because the satellites orbit the earth at eight km per second in a “yarn-like pattern,” there is 100% geographical coverage of the world, but areas only connect for a few minutes a day with so few "birds" in orbit.

“At 250 [satellites], you can start having them close enough to the right latitude to be able to connect them, but you need about 1,000 to have global coverage in the world everywhere, even down to the equator, and that's gonna take a couple years,” Dooley explained.

As Lynk reduces the time between “handoffs,” he says it will enable moving beyond use cases like sending notifications on weather alerts to the ability to make calls and emergency SOS texts – where employing 5G connectivity becomes more useful.

Yet while 5G is the “sexy” new tech spotlighted in some areas of the world, Dooley and Schachne see that bringing more populations into the digital economy means providing what coverage will actually be used.

Most operators globally are still struggling to provide complete coverage in their own countries, “even 4G is not available everywhere,” Schachne explained. “There is still a long way to go.”

Schachne says the partnership aims to take the time to really meet the market and make sure that everyone on the planet can enjoy the services available.

Because it looks like a roaming arrangement for an MNO, Dooley says it’s an attractive opportunity because it doesn’t require any changes to current networks or to users' mobile phones – as the satellites already connect to any 3GPP device.

“That's the great part because we're using the standard roaming agreements. For operators, it's very seamless, so we can facilitate the establishment of a connection with the central satellite with hundreds of operators around the world,” Schachne added.