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Network Infrastructure, Regulatory & Legislative, Rural Telecoms, Satellite & Non-Terrestial Networks, Satellites, Telecoms
Dashveenjit Kaur
2nd July 2026
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The last few per cent of mobile coverage has never been a technology problem. It is a business case problem, and in archipelagic Southeast Asia, the case for building towers on remote islands has never closed. Last week, the region got its first commercial alternative: the Philippines became the first country in Southeast Asia to launch Starlink Direct-to-Cell through a mobile network, after Globe Telecom secured nationwide regulatory approval from the National Telecommunications Commission.
Direct-to-cell technology allows an ordinary smartphone to connect to a satellite overhead when there is no cell tower in range. No dish, no special handset, no separate subscription to a satellite operator. The phone simply treats the satellite as another base station, which is why the industry has taken to calling these spacecraft cell towers in space.
Globe’s service links compatible smartphones to Starlink’s constellation of more than 650 low-Earth orbit satellites, giving users access to SMS, messaging apps, voice and video calls, navigation and mobile data without conventional towers.
It runs on satellite roaming, meaning subscribers in the Philippines connect to the Starlink network without incurring roaming charges, and is initially available on supported Android LTE devices with an active Globe SIM.
The commercial logic is written into the map. The Philippines is an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands that has long struggled to sustain continuous mobile coverage, given its geography and regular exposure to typhoons and earthquakes. The NTC approval lets Globe extend connectivity to the estimated 4% of Filipinos who remain beyond the reach of terrestrial networks, a population that no business case for new towers was ever going to reach.
The technology also arrived with an unplanned field trial. Following the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck parts of South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat and Sarangani in June, the service supported emergency communications for more than 150,000 subscribers in affected areas. Globe president and CEO Carl Cruz said the commercial launch allows the operator to extend coverage beyond traditional cell towers and keep people connected in remote and disaster-stricken areas.
The launch caps a partnership signed in February, when Globe became the first operator in Southeast Asia and the second in Asia to offer Starlink’s direct-to-cell service. Starlink has identified the Philippines, alongside Indonesia, as a key market in expanding global 4G/LTE coverage, which suggests Manila is the template rather than the exception.
Ten days before Globe’s commercial approval, the other half of this story took shape in orbit. Chinese LEO satellite operator Spacesail completed the country’s first direct-to-cell voice calls using unmodified commercial smartphones, with voice quality it says matched terrestrial 5G networks.
The distinction matters. Huawei and Xiaomi phones have offered satellite calling since 2024, but those connect to Tiantong-1, a geostationary system parked 36,000 kilometres up and operated by China Telecom. Spacesail’s low-Earth orbit constellation sits far closer to the planet, delivering stronger signals that let standard 5G phones connect without hardware modifications. In other words, China now has a domestic answer to exactly what Starlink is selling across Asia.
The scale gap remains enormous. Spacesail’s constellation, which entered formal deployment in August 2024, counted 162 satellites in orbit by mid-May, though the operator conducted three launches within 11 days that month alone. Starlink, by comparison, had roughly 9,600 satellites aloft as of March 2026 and reached 10.3 million broadband subscribers across 164 countries and territories in the first quarter.
But the trajectory is familiar to anyone who watched Chinese vendors compress the terrestrial 5G gap, and for Asian governments wary of dependence on a single American provider for emergency communications infrastructure, a credible second supplier changes the negotiation.
Japan’s operators are next in line. NTT Docomo says it is on track to launch direct-to-cell satellite services in early fiscal year 2026, with no special device required and access available on its LTE-compatible phones for text messages and compatible apps in areas beyond base station coverage. Rakuten is targeting late 2026 for its mobile satellite launch with AST SpaceMobile.
The unresolved question is whether any of this makes money. Juniper Research has argued operators will struggle to monetise direct-to-cell as a complement to terrestrial connectivity, noting the service comes at a premium despite limited capabilities, with senior analyst Alex Webb predicting that “subscription-based direct-to-cell will remain a niche market over the next five years.”
The counterargument, which Juniper itself concedes, is that operators will use satellite coverage to make subscriptions stickier and upsell premium tariffs rather than sell it as a standalone product. That framing puts the spotlight on the region’s other archipelagos and under-covered markets.
Indonesia is already on Starlink’s shortlist. Malaysia, with its own East Malaysia coverage economics, has yet to see an operator move, and the regulatory posture in markets across ASEAN will determine whether the Philippine launch was a first or an outlier. The satellites are overhead either way. What changed this week is that a regulator said yes, an operator switched it on, and the region’s coverage gap officially became a market.
See also: SpaceX buys spectrum for Starlink ‘Direct to Cell’ mobile service
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Dashveenjit Kaur
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