One of the benefits of using an iPhone is intimacy. Apple’s software and services take some steps that others do not take in order to protect customers. IMESSAGE is a good example. Messages sent through Imessage use encryption from bottom to bottom, which means that only the sender and the recipient can read the messages or open the attachments. Third parties cannot intercept or read them. This includes Apple themselves, as well as partners such as network operators like T-Mobile.
The latest social media chatter suggests that giving iPhone access to the beta T-Mobile Cellular Starlink is similar to allowing Elon Musk to poke around your phone. But you can relax because it is not true.
(Credit: Apple)
Apple launched its satellite-minded Emergency SOS SOSS SOS in November 2022 and expanded it in messages in 2024. Since then, iPhone 14 and UP owners have been able to send messages when they are out of normal areas of cell covering.
The service is provided through a continuous partnership with the globalstar. But Apple and GlobalStar are not the only companies seeking to bring satellite links to mobile devices.
In August 2022, T-Mobile announced a partnership with Starlink of Spacex to provide sound services and messages to its customers in areas where traditional mobile service is not available. The first Starlink satellites for this service began more than a year ago. This proposed service goes beyond the Emergency Messages SOS. It relies on the existing T-Mobile spectrum 1900MHz to pass signals from mobile phones to Starlink satellites, which then simply transmit the signal to the T-Mobile land cell network.
(Credit: Reddit User UCF_Knight12)
T-Mobile opened beta for public testing with SMS in December and aims to provide this service to all its clients later this year. Beta is free and available for anyone with a compatible phone, which includes iPhones running iOS 18.3+. Once you update and sign up for Beta T-Mobile on an iPhone 14 and up, the phone simply sees Starlink as a T-Mobile service.
Happy what happens when you update in iOS 18.3?
A number of posts on social media, including some in Tiktok, claim that IOS installation 18.3 on iPhones allows Starlink Access people’s phones. That’s not true.
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Apple’s 18.3 iOS does not install Starlink Service on the iPhone, nor installs any Starlink app. This only enables the connection between the iPhone and Starlink satellites through the T-Mobile spectrum. (It also includes a wrong adjustment you probably want to install.)
Other Beta compatible phones include Google Pixel phones and Samsung Galaxy phones. Although iPhones are connected through Gear Starlink, Starlink – and Elon Musk – have no access to calls or messages sent through the connection.
Beta is free to use for now. T-Mobile has not indicated whether or how much it will charge after its satellite connection feature completely begins.
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About Eric Zeman
Managing editor, consumer electronics
