[lxgr]

Iridium is launching 5G standards-based direct-to-device capabilities this year: https://www.iridium.com/services/iridium-ntn-direct

[NetMageSCW]

Only for companies that choose to make or support phones with Iridium connectivity included, as opposed to AST and Starlink targeting existing phones.

[lxgr]

Kind of: Phones will probably need some Iridium-specific RF hardware (unless their existing baseband and amplifiers happen to cover the band it uses), but the baseband and signaling stack won’t be proprietary anymore if I understand it correctly.

Several mass-market phones already are IoT-NTN compatible, e.g. Google’s Pixel line.