D2D Gold Rush: The Race to Own the Sky-to-Phone Future (2025–2033)
In April 2023, AST SpaceMobile’s BlueWalker 3 demonstrated the first two-way voice call from an off-the-shelf smartphone (Samsung Galaxy S22) to a satellite. In November 2022, Apple launched Emergency SOS via Satellite on iPhone 14 using Globalstar, with the service free for two years. In September 2022, Lynk Global received the FCC license for commercial satellite-direct-to-phone services, enabling a 10-satellite initial constellation for SMS. 3GPP Release 17, frozen in 2022, formally added Non-Terrestrial Networks support so standard 5G devices can connect to satellites with adjusted timing and error correction. In 2024, Viasat and BSNL demonstrated two-way SMS connectivity using a