[Starlink] Re: Starlink D2D observation - fwiw

[Ulrich Speidel <u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz>]

Well that's the strange bit. I didn't buy my phone with sat comms 
capability in mind - I would have been quite happy with the local farmer 
helping us out on 70 cm UHF. We did have a PLB with us for emergencies.

But whether your phone is sat comms capable here depends largely on 
SpaceX, not so much on your phone. When One NZ first offered satellite 
service, it was restricted to only a handful of top-of-the-line Apple, 
Samsung and Oppo phones. In early February 2025, Samsung's only One NZ 
sat capable phones were the S25, the S25+, the Z Flip 6 and the Z Fold 
6, as well as the S24 FE, the S24 Ultra, and strangely enough the S24 
and S24+, which they didn't sell in-store at the time. The others had 
very, very little stock then.

Fast forward to today, and anything from an iPhone 13 upwards will do 
(released in late 2021), among the Samsungs now compatible are older 
models like the Z Fold/Flip 5 and 4, the S22 series, and quite a few 
more. Some Motorola and the Smart V26 are now also deemed compatible.

Now, the iPhones and the expensive top of the line Flip/Fold 7 models of 
Samsung have been OK'd for data on select apps - with quite a few of the 
others tagged as "TBC".

Sure looks like good old user density management to me.

On 28/02/2026 7:17 pm, J Pan wrote:
> that's why people say, when look for the next phone, if it does not
> support sat sos/comms, don't buy it, but after buying it, one hopes
> not to use the function, otherwise, likely in disasters
> --
> J Pan, UVic CSc, ECS566, 250-472-5796 (NO VM), Pan@UVic.CA, Web.UVic.CA/~pan
>
> On Fri, Feb 27, 2026 at 6:25 PM Ulrich Speidel via Starlink
> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>> On 28/02/2026 5:56 am, Michael Richardson wrote:
>>> Ulrich Speidel <u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
>>>       >> One road opened again the next morning, and the power came back on later that
>>>       >> day, along with the 4G coverage.
>>>
>>>       mcr> In the interlude between the storm and the roads opening, was it sunny?
>>>
>>>       > It became sunny, yes, but in terms of using something solar PV that day
>>>       > you would have had a hard time on the first day after the  storm. I run
>>>       > my house (including a granny flat) on grid-connected PV with battery
>>>       > backup, and this is what the weather system
>>>       > looked like on our PV system monitor two days earlier when it passed over Auckland:
>>>
>>> I wasn't thinking PV... I was thinking about that you were there to enjoy the
>>> outdoors, and when the sun comes out after a storm, it's kinda extra sunny.
>>> At least, that's how the emotions feel.
>>>
>>> In 2003, I was in Halifax a week after a Hurricane took out 100K trees.
>>> Cdn Thanksgiving weekend (first weekend of Oct), it was super-bright, warm, dry,
>>> with... destruction everywhere.  The contrast startled. Like a dozen clowns wandering
>>> through WWI trenches or something.
>> It abated slowly and turned to cloudy with a bit of sun overnight and
>> then again a bit better the next day. Destruction wasn't immediately
>> obvious apart from a few smaller slips (common here) and the occasional
>> tree damage from wind - we escaped the worst of that, unlike the people
>> on the other side of the range. It wasn't until we started on a few
>> walks when we saw just how badly the river and some of the small creeks
>> had swollen and how much damage that did to the surrounding bush in
>> terms of sediment deposited and mature trees felled. Some of them would
>> have carried over 100 times the amount of water that they usually carry
>> - I'd never seen anything like it.
>>> I would be interesting to learn about the satellite service turn on process.
>>> Did they just do it?  Could a government have asked them explicitely?
>>> Maybe there is fine print that either expects this or demands it.
>> I think they just did it without being asked, because it was in their
>> interest. Essentially they oversold the service somewhat (they're in
>> court for false advertising because of this) by making it look like it
>> was a 1:1 replacement for normal cell service. During normal times,
>> they're covering 99%+ of people here with terrestrial service anyway.
>> Rural areas are covered via a single physical network provider, the
>> Rural Connectivity Group (RCG), a jointly-owned subsidiary of the three
>> mobile network providers in NZ who all tenant together on the RCG sites.
>> So when an RCG site goes down, no terrestrial network works.
>>
>> This made the telcos here look really bad after Cyclone Gabrielle, and
>> obviously some work's gone on to strengthen infrastructure a bit, but I
>> guess much of that would have gone into shoring up service to towns and
>> cities rather than remote valleys with a few farms.
>>
>> So this storm would have been an opportunity to show the rural folk that
>> One NZ has their backs in such situations, distinguish themselves from
>> their competitors, gather brownie points to use in court and curry
>> favour with the government. Likewise, it would have been fairly easy to
>> do for them because of the low user density and usage profile in the area.
>>
>> For where we were, I'd estimate maybe 10-15 mobile phones per square
>> kilometre (if that much), with maybe 3-4 of them being eligible models.
>> Given that the locals there generally have work to do that doesn't
>> involve using apps or texting for much of the day, maybe one active
>> phone per sq km for most of the time?
>>
>> Forgot to mention that my phone indicated that it was roaming, despite
>> me being a One NZ customer.
>>
>> --
>> ****************************************************************
>> Dr. Ulrich Speidel
>>
>> School of Computer Science
>>
>> Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
>>
>> The University of Auckland
>> u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz
>> http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
>> ****************************************************************
>>
>>
>>
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-- 
****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)

The University of Auckland
u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
****************************************************************