Apple satellite patent takes big step toward stable communication

Apple has big plans for satellite services, a new patent filing confirms. It’s the latest nugget of information to roll down Apple Confidential mountain, a plan to make it much easier for devices to maintain connectivity as they move between satellites.

If you’ve been able to use any of the company’s satellite services, you’ll already know that it takes a while to reach a connection with your nearest satellite. Apple has built a handy little visual guide to help you point your device at the best available satellite, but connection takes time —and as the satellite drifts over head on its orbit, you might eventually find you must reconnect to another station.

Space oddity

Wouldn’t it be better if your connection could automatically move between satellites once it is achieved? That kind of capability might support a more stable connection, and (conceivably) let you get more sophisticated tasks done — perhaps even calls or at least extensive two-way messaging. 

What’s new is that Apple now appears to have achieved a way that could enable that. 

As first spotted by Patently Apple, the new patent describes a handover procedure that means the connection a device has with one satellite will smoothly shift over to a second. The technology means that a satellite will generate a group configuration message for all the devices currently connected to it that, when sent, tells the connected devices to transfer their connection to the second satellite. 

The idea is that each satellite then acts as a “transparent network relay mode,” according to the patent. That, the patent claims, would enable groups of smartphones to remain connected. Effectively, this turns those satellites into always moving mobile network masks above the sky. 

Just as mobile networks will serve all the smartphones connected to them in a local area, the satellites will do the same thing. I imagine the aim is to create a seamless satellite connection users don’t have to think too deeply about, once the initial connection is made.

Sun machine

This kind of stable connection is of course essential to support voice calls and internet browsing, though Apple might not be thinking about a future satellite communications service in quite the same way. It could, for example, be simply searching for a global backbone to support its Find My services, or to deliver smart device connectivity off more traditional grids, or even be pondering a highly secure, network agnostic private and secure communications system as a premium service. 

Apple isn’t alone. 

Carriers, including AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, are also now working with satellite services to provide messaging and other features to devices, and Apple will not be investing billions in its satellite partner, GlobalStar, simply to be a bystander in this race. 

It is also interesting, given the quantity of data shared with mobile networks, that Apple’s filing makes particular mention of this: “It is well understood that the use of personally identifiable information should follow privacy policies and practices that are generally recognized as meeting or exceeding industry or governmental requirements for maintaining the privacy of users. In particular, personally identifiable information data should be managed and handled so as to minimize risks of unintentional or unauthorized access or use, and the nature of authorized use should be clearly indicated to users,.”

You can take a look at the new patent here.

Freecloud

All this investment isn’t just focused on voice and messaging. Operators also recognize that as demand for mobile connectivity increases, it becomes essential to find ways to offload some of this activity to alternative networks. That’s why carriers support Wi-Fi calls — because shunting relatively unprofitable voice calls off their network enables them to offer their capacity to support more profitable services. 

Ultimately, it’s all about demand management, and satellite (particularly as 5G tech advances and 6G looms) has a part to play in the tapestry of solutions emerging to help handle the rapidly growing pressure on communications networks. Though there is something to be said for highly private communications and messaging services. Fifty-five years since the first human landing on the moon, if Neil Armstrong landed there today, perhaps he’d call Earth from his iPhone. 

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