It was one year ago today that Telstra launched Australia’s first satellite-to-mobile messaging service, which put connectivity within reach of customers far beyond the range of the regular cellular network.
The occasion was marked with Telstra winning the Comms Day Edison Award for Best National Mobile Network Initiative or Partnership.
Telstra shared some stats on how quickly eligible customers were able to take part and use the connection via Telstra in the past 12 months.
Daily connections grew from around 80,000 to more than 200,000 before the first anniversary.
More than 2.7 million customers have connected via satellite in the past year when previously they simply would have no connection.
And in a country as vast and sparsely populated as Australia, it’s a game changer. The satellites used by Telstra customers are from Starlink.
While satellite-to-mobile is not going to take over the regular mobile networks anytime soon, Telstra sees it as an added layer of redundancy for when their mobile network is disrupted.
For example, during the Victorian bushfires around Longwood and Harcourt at the beginning of the year, there was fire damage and disrupted power, which affected the mobile networks.
Telstra noticed a three-fold increase in eligible customers connecting via satellite messaging even though many people had been evacuated from that area.
In fact many of Telstra’s team members who are volunteer firefighters use this service when fighting the fires in Victoria and remote parts of NSW during January’s busy bushfire season.
Satellite messaging has not been designed as an emergency service because you can’t text Triple Zero directly but it did allow them to share locations and receive updates when no other connectivity was available.
For customers it was also important to let their family members know they were safe.
During an outage in Nowra in August 2025, there was a seven-fold increase in Telstra satellite messaging and traffic during the two-hour period of the outage.
This was the result of a transmission issue that impacted mobile sites between Nowra and Eden.
Customers can look forward to being able to make calls and transfer data via satellite in the years ahead.
