Rural texting is about to get a shot in the arm, provided you’re using a recent iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, or even a newly added Pixel, too.
Australia is big, so big that it can be complex for phone providers to get their connections working across our massive scape of beautiful landscape. The connection problems aren’t typically in the cities, though, but rather rural Australia, with the outback difficult to deal with due to the landscape and lack of mobile towers.
All that land and minimal mobile towers to connect to can make the necessities of calling and texting difficult, though we’ve seen some improvements for at least one of those this year.
Satellite communication has kicked off with texting, with Telstra adding support for text messaging using the satellite network provided by Starlink earlier in the middle of this year.
In just a short amount of time, Australians sent through over 100,000 text messages using the technology, which launched initially on Samsung devices, following up with iPhone access after it, from the iPhone 13 onwards. Now the entire current iPhone range covers satellite texting on Telstra, and it’s not alone.
Now at the tail-end of 2025, Telstra has added support for Google Pixel owners, as well, providing satellite text messaging for owners of the:
- Pixel 10
- Pixel 10 Pro
- Pixel 10 Pro Fold
- Pixel 10 Pro XL
- Pixel 9
- Pixel 9 Pro
- Pixel 9 Pro Fold, and
- Pixel 9 Pro XL
You might notice that list actually misses one Pixel released in the past two years, with no sign of the mid-range focused Pixel 9a. Telstra has confirmed with Pickr that its satellite messaging service “is not compatible with that particular device”, but did note it was adding support for the more budget-focused Samsung Galaxy A17 5G in this update.
However, these updates are just for satellite text messaging, with no satellite phone call support available yet.
We can only imagine that’s something Telstra will be working on next, improving the ability for rural customers to make phone calls now that the 3G network is gone for good.
