Charter and Comcast Offering Emergency Satellite Messaging on Certain Android Phones
Verizon, who the cable giants have MVNO deals with, announced satellite texting on the same Android phones Wednesday.
Jake Neenan
WASHINGTON, March 20, 2025 – Charter and Comcast have partnered with Skylo to provide satellite coverage for their respective mobile services, the companies announced Thursday.
The companies will provide emergency texting service when customers are out of range of their provider’s terrestrial networks. Both cable companies provide mobile service through deals with Verizon, and have more than 17 million subscribers between them.
Only Samsung Galaxy S25 and Google Pixel 9 phones can use the feature for now. The cable giants said that “Skylo plans to make its services available on additional devices in the future,” but didn’t provide a timetable. Skylo doesn’t own satellites, but partners with the major satellite providers.
Verizon announced Wednesday that satellite texting – not just to emergency services – was operational for its own customers. It was also powered by Skylo, and was also limited to the same Galaxy and Pixel models.
Partnerships between satellite and mobile providers have been gaining traction. Verizon, along with AT&T, has partnered with satellite company AST SpaceMobile to develop supplemental voice and data service. T-Mobile has a simialr deal with SpaceX, and its satellite messaging service is in beta. Manufacturers like Apple and Google have partnered with satellite companies to offer direct-to-device services regardless of which network a phone is on.
“The availability of satellite backup service provides Spectrum Mobile customers with a sense of security, knowing they can stay connected even in the most remote locations,” Danny Bowman, Charter’s executive vice president of product, said in a statement.
In a bid to get more airwaves for satellite broadband and “6G, which will interweave terrestrial
and satellite networks into a seamless consumer experience,” SpaceX is interested in getting some of the upper C-band allocated to satellite providers. Elon Musk, the billionaire leading President Donald Trump’s efforts to consolidate power over the federal bureaucracy, owns the company.
The Federal Communications Commission is taking input on how best to put the band to better use. The mobile carriers are seen as likely to get at least some of the airwaves, since the C-band directly below was already sold to them, but FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has been a supporter of Musk’s.
In March of last year, the FCC instituted a framework for greenlighting deals in which satellite providers lease wireless carrier spectrum to supplement their coverage. The T-Mobile/SpaceX deal had already been approved, but it was on a one-off basis.
Comcast and Charter have also been leaning into their mobile offering generally as they continue to shed fixed broadband subscribers – the giants both lost more subscribers than Wall Street had expected last quarter, and analysts aren’t anticipating a return to positive numbers soon. Signing customers up for bundled fixed and mobile services appears, Charter and the big wireless carriers have said, to help with customer retention.
