Even tho I've read direct to cell before, it didn't click until now that they meant that this would work as a cell antenna (more or less). I sometimes have to carry a sat phone for work and was wondering how this was to work on a normal cell phone!
I'm still not on board with it but the tech is interesting.
The biggest thing that they have to overcome is the super weak signals from space. You can send the data across, fine, but you've got to deal with super, super weak signals from that kind of distance.
Ya, it is pretty hard to talk on a sat phone. If you call someone, it's best if they know what you are calling from bc of that delay. Not huge, but it can matter. I can't imagine it will be different with direct to cell but they may use some sort of buffering to help.