US approves Starlink to provide emergency cell coverage in hurricane-affected North Carolina
Summary: The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has approved SpaceX and T-Mobile to use Starlink satellites for direct-to-cell coverage in North Carolina, which was severely affected by Hurricane Helene. This allows cellphones to receive emergency alerts and may enable basic texting.
Previously, over 74% of cell towers were out of service in the impacted areas. This number has now decreased to 17% as restoration efforts continue. T-Mobile reports that its network is nearly fully restored, with only minor outages remaining.
Starlink's direct-to-cell capability is still in early testing, as the full satellite constellation is not yet operational. The focus is on providing emergency alerts to smartphones while the companies work to improve connectivity in disaster-hit regions.
This is article metrics. Combined, they form a significance score, that indicates how important the news is on a scale from 0 to 10.
My algorithm scores 10,000 news articles daily, and creates a single significance-ordered list of news.
Read more about how I calculate significance, or see today's top ranked news on the main page:
See today's news rankings