T-mobile and SpaceX partnership more important than GPS

It is really remarkable how Elon Musk manages to put Starship as a critical resource not just of national but also international infrastructure. First, this heavy lift rocket was seen as a dream of a competent, but often capricious billionaire. Certainly not the first person that had large "space vision". But many just ignored it as just another dream. 

Starlink was announced in January 2015, as another dream. Gradually it come to fruition, when major surprise in April 2019 was the packaging of 60 satellites in a single Falcon 9 launch. Suddenly Starlink seemed feasible, at least for the build out of the initial constellation. But still its failure would not be considered critical by anyone but few hundred thousand subscribers.

Then NASA awarded SpaceX a sole provider contract for providing services of lunar Human Landing System (HLS) based on Starship infrastructure. It seemed a big bet from NASA, since it effectively bet a success of Artemis program on the Starship success. Again, there would be no big consequences (beside government embarrassment) it Starship would fail.

But recent T-Mobile and SpaceX partnership announcement really puts Starship on the critical path for future national and international communication infrastructure. In essence, this partnership means that regular mobile phones which we use every day will be able to communicate with Starlink v2 satellites as a redundancy option anywhere in the world (if local governments approves it). Including all the oceans and both polar regions. This is a holy grail for emergency management, search and rescue or any other off-the-grid communication services. Suddenly, any government in the world (providing it is not US adversary) will become interested in having Starlink support because there is no other technology provider that can come even close to this capability. Suddenly, Starlink becomes as important as GPS on the international level. This can be only realized if Starship is successful, since physical dimensions of v2 satellites are specifically designed to fully utilize Starship cargo space. 

No Starship means no Starlink v2 with cellular connectivity support. Which means no dead zone and global cellular redundancy support. Suddenly, it is not just NASA or US DoD that is interested in Starship success. Now every national telecommunication regulatory organization on national or international level becomes interested party. And also every mobile telecommunications company in the world. Because the satellite based mobile tower support will become mandatory service in any country that has at least some interest to provide security for its citizens. Of course, there will be many political and security aspects that will slow down adoption across the world. Starlink already provides service in almost forty countries, and its number of likely to grow significantly over time.

Such a critical service means that Starlink, and this Starship becomes "to big to fail". It becomes part of worldwide critical infrastructure that must be protected and maintained at all costs. It basically protects Starlink from negative public feedback of night sky pollution and gives them edge in interference disputes. Because basically it transforms Starlink and Starship from rich-man dream to life-saving technology on worldwide scale.

Like GPS, it is likely that other large countries will try to come up with similar capability. But it really requires combination of many state-of-the art technologies which only SpaceX possesses. Reusable super heavy lift vehicle, mass satellite production and advanced phased array technology which gives them years, and perhaps decades, before similar feat could be repeated especially outside US.