[wkat4242]

I know my previous sat phone from Thuraya had a GPS receiver and refused to connect before getting a GPS lock for precisely this reason.

Now, Thuraya is a bit weird in that they have some price plans that differ by the country you're calling from. Most sat phone networks don't do that but Thuraya is the cheapest in airtime by far especially when using some of these plans.

But I wouldn't be surprised if most networks work this way. After all a gps receiver costs peanuts these days and takes up trivial amounts of space.

If this is the case it's kinda cool because it can then also be used to circumvent these restrictions by spoofing the GPS signal either over the air or in the transceiver itself. Highly illegal obviously but technically cool.

Also, simply turning off the sat over these areas is not so easy because the footprint will cover a radius of hundreds of kilometers. So border areas will be a big problem.

You won't be able to spoof the gps location too much though because if you give it a location way outside your footprint I'm sure the sat is smart enough to block you.

[nucleardog]

> If this is the case it's kinda cool because it can then also be used to circumvent these restrictions by spoofing the GPS signal either over the air or in the transceiver itself. Highly illegal obviously but technically cool.

Since the Starlink satellites aim themselves to an extent, I’d think spoofing your location _too_ far away from where you actually are could end up with you unable to actually get a lock on any satellites.

[inemesitaffia]

Starlink has cells which can create virtual fences. Your GPS location has to match the cell you claim to be in.

People tried spoofing in 2021

[badcarbine]

So what if instead of not turning it off because of the radius, we made a giant frickin cantenna and made a more focused beam!

[wkat4242]

Of course they focus in smaller areas as it significantly increases capacity too (providing multiple cells per sat with each their own capacity). But a more focused beam is still not able to follow borders tightly.

It's easier to focus from LEO (low earth orbit) like Starlink but there you're dealing with a constantly moving footprint. And see how small a Starlink sat is. Good luck fitting the big cantenna (and really you want several). Phased array yes but not a huge one. The more elements the tighter the focus.

With GEO (geostationary orbit) you don't have the moving problems and they do use static "cantennas" or rather dishes but you're so far away that you can't focus tightly anyway. The footprint of a single GEO cell dish is still the size of a small country.