O2 Satellite adds UK coverage from 89% to 95% for £3 a month

TL;DR
Virgin Media O2 said its O2 Satellite service, launched in February for £3 per month through a partnership with SpaceX Starlink, increases O2’s UK network coverage from 89% to 95%.

Virgin Media O2 launched O2 Satellite in February, offering direct-to-device satellite connectivity on O2 for £3 per month through SpaceX’s Starlink network. Rob Joyce, Virgin Media O2’s Director of Mobile Access Engineering, said the service extends O2’s overall UK coverage from 89% to 95%.

During a field test in Snowdonia, O2 devices switched to satellite service at Pen-y-Pass near Yr Wyddfa after losing terrestrial coverage. Joyce said heavy rain should cause very little attenuation at 1,800 MHz, the band used by O2 Satellite, and said an earlier connection failure was more likely caused by devices still trying to connect to the terrestrial network.

Virgin Media O2 said the current Starlink direct-to-device service supports basic data services rather than high-bandwidth use. The report said each satellite can deliver about 50 spot beams, each with a diameter of roughly 50 km, and about 4 Mbps shared across users, which was enough in the test to send texts, use apps, and make internet-based voice calls.

SpaceX’s current direct-to-device service relies on about 650 satellites, and the company is expected to start launching V2 satellites next year with roughly 20 times the throughput of V1 satellites. The report also said SpaceX recently bought 14 MHz of 800 MHz spectrum in the US, while O2 holds 10 MHz in the same band.