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T-Satellite, the Starlink satellite-to-phone roaming service that T-Mobile began selling in July, has drawn the interest and business of an unusual segment of customers: AT&T customers.
A Thursday study from the Ookla found that among Android smartphones running Ookla’s software that connected to Starlink anytime between December 2024 and last month, 60.9% were on T-Mobile and 34% were on AT&T. Only 2.2% were on Verizon, with the remaining 3% of phones on AT&T’s FirstNet service for first responders.
(Credit: Ookla)
T-Mobile bundles T-Satellite, which supports texting as well as a small subset of apps, with the expensive Experience Beyond plan, which starts at $100 per month for one line. The carrier also offers it for free on its also-pricey Experience More plan ($85 on a single line with autopay) through the end of the year, after which it will cost $10 a month.
Everybody else needs to pay $10 a month today, and Verizon and AT&T customers have to visit a T-Mobile store or call their customer service to add it.
Ookla analyst Mike Dano suggests in the report that Verizon subscribers with Android phones are less interested in T-Satellite because those with recent Pixel and Samsung Galaxy phones already have free satellite texting from that carrier’s partner Skylo.
Ookla’s data comes from the Speedtest network-benchmarking app installed on vast numbers of mobile devices, but this study’s smaller sample sizes may make it less representative than Ookla’s large-scale tests of national network performance. For the week of Sept. 8, the last interval covered in the report, Ookla counted 281 T-Mobile devices connected to Starlink, 178 of AT&T’s phones on the satellite service, and just 10 from Verizon.
Ookla also measured the US counties with the highest numbers of Starlink-linked phones, and the top location, Los Angeles County, is not the like the four following it: Larimer County, CO; Teton County, WY; Mohave County, AZ; and Mineral County, MT.
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That, Dano explains, is because LA County includes the Angeles National Forest. “This remote area contains several wilderness zones, including the Cucamonga Wilderness, Magic Mountain Wilderness, and Pleasant View Ridge Wilderness, as well as a portion of the Pacific Crest Trail,” he writes.
(Credit: Ookla)
The wildfires that raged through parts of the county in early 2025 also provided satellite connectivity with an early real-world test, with SpaceX and T-Mobile activating Starlink roaming for free in those areas in January.
Since then, the project that the two companies announced in August 2022 has seen a series of expansions and enhancements. That doesn’t mean everybody will mistake this for 5G connectivity: In one recent test, PCMag’s Michael Kan placed WhatsApp video calls and streamed live video on X from a Pixel 10 on a beach about 50 miles south of San Francisco, but saw significant tradeoffs in resolution and reliability.
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Dano also underscores the reliability of traditional cellular coverage. Speedtest data for all of 2024 show that phones spent a microscopic minority of time without any carrier service: 2.41% for Verizon, 2.68% for AT&T, and 3.18% for T-Mobile. The latter, however, had the best 5G availability, at 69.44% of the time compared to 60.15% for AT&T and 34.68% for Verizon.
(Credit: Ookla)
SpaceX aims to boost Starlink roaming’s reach and capacity with a new generation of larger v3 satellites to be launched by its Starship rocket, but that giant vehicle has yet to reach orbit after 11 test flights. SpaceX also aims to improve this service with spectrum it’s buying from Boost Mobile in the wake of that service abandoning its ambitions to build a fourth nationwide network.
Meanwhile, other companies are vying to provide more than messaging from space, and exploring projects that would not require subscribers to give Elon Musk even more money that the world’s wealthiest human can spend on such polarizing political projects as his promotion of far-right parties in other countries.
Skylo has been working to support voice calling, while AT&T and Verizon have deals inked with the startup AST SpaceMobile to deliver messaging, voice, and data services from that firm’s planned constellation of large low-Earth-orbit satellites. And Globalstar, the company that provides Apple’s satellite messaging for iPhones, is now planning its own new constellation to deliver expanded services.
Disclosure: PCMag’s parent company Ziff Davis owns Ookla.
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Rob Pegoraro writes about interesting problems and possibilities in computers, gadgets, apps, services, telecom, and other things that beep or blink. He’s covered such developments as the evolution of the cell phone from 1G to 5G, the fall and rise of Apple, Google’s growth from obscure Yahoo rival to verb status, and the transformation of social media from CompuServe forums to Facebook’s billions of users. Pegoraro has met most of the founders of the internet and once received a single-word email reply from Steve Jobs.
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