Dropped calls are one of those annoyances we have all learned to live with. You drive through a dead zone or walk into the wrong corner of your house, and suddenly your call is gone. SpaceX wants to fix that, and it has picked Qualcomm to help.
Qualcomm has announced that SpaceX will use its Dragonwing Cellular Infrastructure platforms to build Starlink Mobile, a nationwide terrestrial 5G network in the United States. In simple terms, Qualcomm’s technology will power Starlink’s cell towers on the ground.
Why is Starlink building cell towers?
Michael Nicolls, Senior Vice President of Starlink, said that calls dropping at home or on the go shouldn’t still be a problem today. Starlink’s answer is the first fully integrated nationwide network that combines satellite and ground coverage, so you stay connected no matter where you are.
He added that Qualcomm’s expertise and platform will help Starlink speed up the development of its end-to-end base station architecture.
What makes Qualcomm’s tech special?
The network will use Massive MIMO radio units with 64 transmit and 64 receive paths. Think of it as a cell tower with lots of antennas working together. This setup is designed to improve coverage, capacity, and how efficiently the network uses its airwaves, so it can handle more traffic.
The Dragonwing QRU100 handles processing for the radio units, while the QDU100 takes care of the fast, time-sensitive processing behind the scenes. Together, they are designed to deliver better performance per watt, and that energy efficiency makes it more affordable to deploy the network at scale.
Durga Malladi, EVP and GM of Technology Planning, Edge Solutions, and Data Center at Qualcomm Technologies, said the partnership is advancing 5G today and could pave the way for AI-native 6G in the coming years.
What does this mean for you?
If you live in an area with patchy coverage, this is exciting news. Starlink will deploy the network across multiple bands in several rollout waves, so it won’t happen overnight. However, a network that blends satellites and cell towers could finally make dropped calls a thing of the past.