All phones are satellite phones, already.

[MrPrena]

I am already using apps.
Kakao talk
Line
And plan to add WhatsApp for another free voice.

I talk with my friends all over the globe for free, thanks to apps.

[MrPrena]

Slightly off topic.
(NOTE: I am not bashing, but ranting. it was about 15-20 years ago (98-04'ish). Ive seen their recent course work, and looks like CU hasn't changed a thing to TLEN.)

This thread reminds me of TLEN at U of CO at Boulder. The bigger joker grad degree you can get.
https://catalog.colorado.edu/courses-a-z/tlen/

I have 15 friends who did TLEN. HOwever, the CU Telecommunication has been blackballed by Samsung, LG, Apple, Cisco, VZ, ATT, S, and QCOM + other top global 100.
why? it is fake engineering degree.

[asmo]

Uhh.. i=1/d?

[Holger Danske]

Ham radio operators can do this today using a handheld transceiver and a directional antenna. What impresses me is the guys that bounce their signal off of the moon. This is a technique called Earth Moon Earth bounce.

[OtterbatHellcat]

That shit gives me a boner. Just sayin'.

[Irving]

Is that kind of like when roofers bounce the sound of their pneumatic nail guns off of all the other houses in the neighborhood?

[Holger Danske]

I suppose so. The ham guys just have cooler equipment.

[FoxtArt]

It may be possible for a few cell phones, but satellites do not have the data capacity to handle even 0.01% of them. That's why Iridium calls are so expensive, and why satellite internet is always capped on low bandwidth.

PS: Satellites do not actually send GPS coordinates to your phone. They basically just scream EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE and your phone, like listening to a passing train, uses the Doppler shift effect to figure out the location of the satellites, then triangulating between multiple screaming satellites without any real data transfer, and figuring out it's own location by figuring out the location of the satellites in reference to itself.