The iPhone 14 introduced Emergency SOS via satellite in September 2022 using the Globalstar network, with a US/Canada launch in November 2022 and expansion to 17 countries by mid-2024. The Huawei Mate 60 Pro, released in August 2023, became the world’s first smartphone to support direct satellite voice calls via China’s Tiantong-1 GEO constellation. Iridium…
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OneWeb’s first-generation constellation comprises 648 LEO satellites at about 1,200 km altitude, each ~150 kg, using Ku-band for user links and Ka-band for gateways, with 16 spot beams and no inter-satellite laser links, delivering up to 7.2 Gbps per satellite. By late 2021, OneWeb achieved partial service in high-latitude regions, focusing on the Arctic, Northern…
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Starlink is a SpaceX satellite internet constellation that began launching in 2019 to deliver broadband virtually anywhere on Earth. As of late 2024, SpaceX had launched over 7,000 Starlink satellites, with FCC authorization for about 12,000 and potential expansion beyond 30,000 in the future. Starlink satellites orbit at approximately 550 km altitude in multiple orbital…
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Malaysia’s internet penetration exceeds 97% of the population, with mobile subscriptions around 130%. Fiber broadband in Kuala Lumpur is widely available, dominated by Telekom Malaysia’s Unifi, with TIME dotCom, Maxis, and CelcomDigi as major players; TIME offers symmetrical speeds up to 1 Gbps in many high-rise residences. By early 2024, about 3.32 million of Malaysia’s…
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Bangkok’s connectivity is among Southeast Asia’s best, with Thailand ranking 13th globally for fixed broadband speeds in early 2025 at about 237 Mbps, driven by Bangkok’s dense fiber backbone and data centers. Bangkok was among the first Thai cities to deploy FTTH, making fiber the default home internet in urban areas with typical speeds from…
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Thailand connected to the international Internet in the late 1980s and moved to full TCP/IP by 1992. In 2004, unmetered flat-rate broadband plans were introduced, spurring rapid broadband growth from 2005 onward. The Net Pracharat Village Broadband Internet project extends high-speed internet to over 75,000 villages. Thailand’s fixed broadband ranking rose from 34th in 2018…
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A China Mobile 5G base station was installed at Mount Everest base camp at 6,500 meters in 2020, making it the world’s highest 5G site. By 2019, more than 98% of Tibet’s villages had fiber‑optic broadband and 4G mobile coverage due to government investment. By 2018, government universal service projects connected over 5,000 villages with…
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Nepal’s mobile market is led by Nepal Telecom with about 57% share, Ncell around 36%, and Smart Telecom about 6%. WorldLink Communications is the largest fixed broadband ISP with 972,781 subscribers as of 2024, roughly 30% of Nepal’s fixed broadband connections. FTTH subscribers surpassed 2.5 million in January 2023 and reached about 2.89 million by…
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Univision LLC leads Mongolia’s internet market with about 62% market share and is part of the Unitel group, offering fiber-optic broadband and IPTV. MobiCom Corporation (including Mobinet) is the second-largest ISP with roughly 15% market share, and operates both mobile networks and internet services. Skymedia Corporation holds around 10% of the ISP market and Mobinet…
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Kwangmyong is North Korea’s nationwide domestic intranet that is completely isolated from the World Wide Web and hosts roughly 1,000–5,500 internal websites. Global Internet access is restricted to a tiny elite; only a few dozen websites are reachable from abroad, with a 2016 leak noting 28 .kp domains and North Korea having about 1,024 Internet…
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