Canadians just got a massive upgrade to their mobile phone service. People living up north can now use the SpaceX satellite-to-phone service, known as Starlink Mobile, both in their home country and while roaming across the United States. The major Canadian mobile carrier, Rogers Communications, already offers Starlink Mobile to its domestic users. Still, on Thursday, the company officially expanded that vital satellite connectivity to customers traveling south across the border.
This new technology works like magic for travelers. Starlink Mobile access automatically pops up on your smartphone the second you enter a completely dead zone that sits far beyond the range of traditional cell phone towers. Because it works anywhere under the open sky, this new satellite roaming capability proves incredibly useful for Canadians traveling through remote areas. If you love taking long road trips through the mountains or hiking deep into the national parks, you no longer have to worry about losing your connection to the outside world.
Rogers Communications wants to make this feature as easy to use as possible. For current Rogers customers, satellite-to-mobile roaming in the US is included with their Popular or Ultimate plans, which already feature US coverage. Customers using the Roam Like Home feature and selecting Travel Passes also get this massive upgrade at absolutely no extra cost. To make this seamless cross-border feature a reality, Rogers partnered directly with T-Mobile in the United States. T-Mobile currently offers its own unique Starlink Mobile implementation, called T-Satellite, which also activates automatically whenever a user wanders into a dead zone.
This massive cross-border announcement naturally makes people wonder if T-Mobile will soon offer the same arrangement for its own American users traveling up into Canada. For now, the carrier refuses to give a straight answer. A T-Mobile representative simply told reporters that they do not have any additional details to share just yet, but suggested everyone stay tuned for future updates. In the meantime, the current T-Satellite service works perfectly in dead zones across the entire continental US, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and large parts of southern Alaska.
Rogers is not the first international carrier to strike this kind of deal. The Canadian company announced this new capability shortly after Japan’s KDDI Au carrier began offering its own Starlink Mobile access to subscribers traveling to the US. The Japanese carrier rolled the feature out slowly, turning it on first for Android handsets before eventually expanding the service to iPhones later in the year.
Of course, Apple already offers its built-in satellite messaging feature for dead zones, completely free, on newer iPhones. However, the SpaceX solution stands out from the crowd because it has the raw power to process real data for select mobile apps. While the Apple feature only sends basic text messages, Starlink Mobile lets you make live video calls on WhatsApp and pull up live directions on Google Maps while standing in the middle of nowhere. T-Mobile has also been gradually expanding its list of supported apps to include everyday tools like Yahoo Mail, Apple Music, and various popular hiking apps.
The technology will only get faster from here. SpaceX is already preparing to drastically upgrade its satellite connectivity to full 5G speeds starting next year. The company plans to use a brand-new fleet of next-generation satellites to deliver massive download speeds of up to 150 Mbps directly to standard cell phones. For T-Mobile, the carrier mostly offers Starlink Mobile access as a paid add-on, though it’s included as a free perk on its most expensive premium plans. Even non-T-Mobile users can sign up for the service, but the company requires them to call a customer service representative or visit a physical T-Mobile store to set up the account.
