Apple's extending its iPhone 14’s satellite-enabled emergency capabilities to the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Ireland highlights market opportunities for reliable coverage in remote areas and prompts a bigger point in the evolution of 5G and 3GPP specifications for 5G non-terrestrial networks (NTNs), according to TTP's Advanced Technology Lead for NTNs Peter Kibutu.

Kibutu works in the company’s 5G NTN division with incumbent and new space-satellite operators, telcos, network and handset vendors to deploy and commercialize NTNs. Speculation on the technology's viability has changed in recent years, with T-Mobile’s partnership with SpaceX, Microsoft's updated Azure’s Space Platform, and 5G narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) satellite wholesaler Sateliot scheduling its debut launch. Apple’s announcement is the latest of a news onslaught in telecom’s race to space.

“Ultimately the early moves from Apple and T-Mobile will have galvanized a lot of action. We expect many more partnership announcements in 2023,” Kibutu told SDxCentral. “Right now we are looking at ‘pre-NTN’ implementations aiming to stimulate early adopters who wouldn’t otherwise be willing to buy a separate satellite phone.”

Apple’s launch will be a key insight into the “trade-offs” needed to map network configuration standards, Kibutu noted.

“Antenna size and form factor will be very important," he explained. "Unlike terrestrial [communications], there is a direct correlation between antenna performance and the economics of providing a satellite service – a poor antenna at either end of the link affects the whole network capacity."

Additionally, the ease of use will be a critical point from a user perspective to develop smooth coverage transitions between NTNs and terrestrial networks.

“Then, service coverage regions: global coverage in non-GEO orbit requires whole constellations to be launched and operational," Kibutu added. "Early movers will be running partial constellations initially, which will have a knock-on effect for coverage."

Kibutu says the “critical point will come with the availability of chipsets that use a standardized Release 17 NTN, which are coming in 2023, and allow the introduction of true 5G NTN-enabled handsets in 2024."

“Once these handsets from the mainstream vendors hit the mass market, the pre-NTN network implementations will have an opportunity to pivot toward the greater economies of scale offered by true 5G NTN, which will result in a conveyor belt of new 5G NTN features, with more coming along with Release 18 and so on,” he added.