Falls Church company sends text from space satellite to phone

Lynk Global Inc. plans to use satellites to provide broadband services to more than 5 billion mobile phone users.

Published March 18, 2020 by Sydney Lake

Falls Church-based wireless network company Lynk Global Inc. said Wednesday that it has sent a text message from a satellite in space to a standard mobile phone on Earth. 

“This is a game-changer for the billions of people who own a mobile phone, for the billions who do not have affordable connectivity, and for the entire mobile communications industry,” Lynk Co-Founder and CEO Charles Miller said in a statement. “In the near future, you will stay connected everywhere. All the time.”

Lynk created low-Earth orbit nanosatellites — orbiting at an altitude of 2,000 kilometers or less above the Earth — that can connect directly to mobile phones. 

The company’s ultimate goal is to use satellites to provide broadband services to more than 5 billion mobile phone users who don’t have reliable access to wireless signals. Sending a signal from space is more cost-efficient than building and operating cell towers, according to Lynk. 

“This is a critical verification of our revolutionary radio access network technology’s ability to compensate for the effects of placing the cell tower in orbit, which mobile standards were not designed for,” Lynk Co-Founder Tyghe Speidel said in a statement. 

Lynk tested the satellite for the first time on Feb. 24 from the Falkland Islands, about 300 miles east of South America’s Patagonian coast, and replicated it several more times. 

Lynk is a small business that launched in 2017 and has launched four cell towers in space for testing.