Month: June 2021

Starlink Aiming For Global Coverage By September

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Gwynne Shotwel, SpaceX’s president and COO was recently quoted by Reuters:

We’ve successfully deployed 1,800 or so satellites and once all those satellites reach their operational orbit, we will have continuous global coverage, so that should be like September timeframe.”

Shotwel’s comments were made during a conversation with Macquarie Group, an investment banking company.

While Starlink may have global coverage before the end of 2021, I expect it will take longer for Starlink to offer service in the majority of countries. The company has plenty of logistical and regulatory hurdles to deal with.

Dish’s Project Genesis

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Dish recently launched a mysterious website, 5gMobileGenesis.com, where visitors can sign up for something called Project Genesis. Few details are available about the project. Here’s a snapshot from the homepage:

Project Genesis homepage snapshot

In an article on Light Reading, Mike Dano suggests “Project Genesis” may be a brand name for Dish’s 5G service. Dano suggests the talk of “democratizing wireless” could be intended to give Dish’s 5G a made-in-America vibe:

The site’s patriotic phrasing doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Dish executives have long touted the company’s desire to primarily use American vendors for 5G (though both of Dish’s radio vendors are based in Asia).

Peter Adderton also suspects Project Genesis is about branding:

I’m not so sure Dano and Adderton have the full story. Here’s the message I saw after filling out a form on the Project Genesis website:

Message congratulating me for being a founding member of Project Genesis

Dish might be using phrases like “original founder” and “democratizing wireless” in an empty matter. But there could be more substance. Helium, which I’m sure I’ll write more about soon, is trying to create a decentralized 5G network. Could Dish be doing something similar?

Tim McDonald, a keen observer of the telecom industry, considered the possibility:

Law enforcement sirens

Trouble At Q Link

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On Wednesday, investigators from multiple federal agencies raided the office of Q Link Wireless and Hello Mobile. While I’m not sure what’s going on, I’m suspicious investigators are looking into possible misuse of the government’s Lifeline program.

The program offers telecom providers subsidies to help low-income consumers pay for phone or internet service. Fraud isn’t anything new for Lifeline. The FCC recently caught Sprint misusing the program. Sprint’s misuse ultimately lead to a $200 million fine.1

CBS4 covered the raid and shared this quote from Ivan Ramirez, a member of one of the agencies involved in the investigation:

We are looking into how they provide their services…If they are to provide a service that is backed by the federal government there are certain stipulations and guidelines that must be met. If they’re not meeting those guidelines or there are some situations where anomalies pop up somewhere we’re going to come in and look.

The websites for Q Link and Hello Mobile were down when I tried to access them on Wednesday, but both websites are back online now. This latest incident only adds to my reservations about both carriers. Just a few weeks ago, I was discussing Hello Mobile and shared my two cents about the company:

I’ve just been so floored by its [Hello Mobile’s] unprofessionalism…seen an outrageous number of customer support horror stories relative to the company’s size…Hello Mobile responded horribly to what was already a pretty unimpressive security failing…the company (or someone it hired) seems to have left spam comments on my site.

A Reddit comment gives a feel for the frequency of the customer support fiascos. Ars Technica covered the security issue. One of my blog posts discusses the spam comments.

Hat tip to Joe Paonessa of BestMVNO who alerted me about this story.