Japanese operator NTT DoCoMo reported more than five million connections to its consumer-facing Starlink service.

Launched in April, the DoCoMo Starlink Direct offering leverages SpaceX’s Starlink Mobile satellite service. The service is automatically included for free in almost all DoCoMo tariff plans, meaning the five million figure represents the number of connected users instead of a subscriber count.

DoCoMo caters the service for connectivity where terrestrial mobile service is lacking, such as mountains, remote islands, and at sea.

The operator also pointed to its use in disaster scenarios, having introduced Starlink as a base station backhaul system following the Noto Peninsula Earthquake in 2024. The venture utilized terminals from its Starlink Business service, which has seen commercial deployment across health care, construction, and tourism since its launch in late 2023.

NTT DoCoMo's business arm also runs a service for vessels using Starlink Business. The ShipLink system has been tested on NTT's own Kizuna cable laying ship.

DoCoMo's Starlink Direct represents a business-to-consumer (B2C) side to its satellite-based services. According to the firm, 89 of its smartphone models are satellite-compatible, representing more than 25 million handsets in use.

DoCoMo and 'Neo' GEO

In a recent interview with this title, DoCoMo 6G technology chief Satoshi Nagata stressed that geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) remains important for the operator as low-Earth orbit (LEO) remains insufficient.

DoCoMo runs its Widestar GEO-based emergency service, which is used by government officials in case a base station is affected by disaster. The firm is exploring GEO’s potential use in enterprise cases such as IoT and supporting rural agriculture and fishing operations, as well as its foundational use for 6G technology.

As Nagata explained, DoCoMo views future mobile infrastructure in three-dimensional terms instead of a two-dimensional terrestrial basis, thanks to its foundation of GEO and LEO satellite services.

“It's a three-dimensional network,” Nagata said. “With 6G, we have LEO and GEO. This network in the sky connects to the ground, to the [current] horizontal network."

Away from Starlink, the NTT group has a strategic partnership with Amazon Leo, formerly known as Project Kuiper. Signed in 2023, the venture represented Amazon’s first collaboration in the Asia-Pacific region.

As part of the deal, DoCoMo uses Amazon’s satellites to connect rural and remote parts of Japan back to its core telecom network.