In the race to space, Bullitt eschews proprietary approaches

Bullitt, a UK-based maker of hardened Android smartphones, said it will leverage 3GPP-based 5G technology standards in its efforts to connect its forthcoming smartphones directly to satellites.

That, according to Bullitt’s co-founder Richard Wharton, makes the company different from Apple, which recently announced that its new iPhone 14 can connect directly to satellites.

“It’s a very different proposition really,” Wharton told Light Reading.

Bullitt, whose phones are sold under the Cat and Motorola brands, appears poised to become the second smartphone maker in the world to offer phone-to-satellite services. The company has promised to offer the capability on new Bullitt phones starting in February 2022 after a full unveiling during January’s CES trade show in Las Vegas.

Wharton declined to provide key details about Bullitt’s planned phone-to-satellite offering but said the service will rely on the 3GPP’s new “Release 17” specifications. Apple, for its part, is using a proprietary service built on spectrum from Globalstar for the emergency phone-to-satellite service on the iPhone 14.

‘It’s real’

“We’ve essentially built a carrier-grade network,” Wharton said, explaining that Bullitt has been working for more than two years on developing a phone that can connect directly to satellites. He said the company has developed the necessary chipset integration, ground-based technology and billing system to support its planned offering.

“That’s certainly what makes us unique,” he said.

But it’s the company’s adherence to 3GPP standards that could really set Bullitt apart, according to Wharton. The 3GPP – the primary standards-development group for 5G technology – recently put the finishing touches on the Release 17 specifications. One element covered is 5G connections over non-terrestrial networks (NTN) such as satellite networks. Chipmaker MediaTek and Eutelsat, a European satellite company, led the work on that piece of the 3GPP’s new release.

To read the complete article, visit Light Reading.