DT, Skylo and Qualcomm tout D2D demoDT, Skylo and Qualcomm tout D2D demo

Deutsche Telekom, Qualcomm and Skylo, the pioneer in Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) communications, today announced the successful completion of an end-to-end trial of SMS send and receipt over GEO satellite. It is the first time in Europe that an operator's terrestrial mobile network has been integrated into a satellite network to enable texting based on the 3GPP Release 17 specifications for Direct-to-Handset (D2H) connectivity.

The standards-based operator-native NB-NTN D2H approach involves the integration of mobile operator terrestrial networks into Skylo's non-terrestrial network to ensure ubiquitous coverage. It will allow customers in white spots without any access to terrestrial network to send and receive text messages globally using satellite connectivity. The proof-of-concept, which was conducted in Greece at Deutsche Telekom's Cosmote subsidiary, marks an important step on the road to commercial operator-native NTN services for customers in Europe.

Read the full press release here.

Skylo