Not only one company

The consumer dish network people have seen after storms is Starlink, from SpaceX. Through a partner carrier it also lets some ordinary phones text through its satellites. That is real in 2026. It is still mostly texts and light apps, not a replacement for every tower.

Amazon Leo, the network once called Project Kuiper, is launching competing dishes, with commercial service aimed around late 2026. Its separate plan to talk directly to phones is not a 2026 product; deployment is talked about around 2028.

Eutelsat OneWeb sells low-orbit dishes mostly to companies and governments. AST SpaceMobile and others bet on very large antennas that talk to ordinary phones; continuous service like a normal tower is still ahead of the current text-first offers.

After a disaster the honest limits stay the same for every name on that list: power, open sky, a compatible phone, a carrier that switched the service on, and congestion when a whole town tries at once.

The tempting mistake is to make “buy that brand” the invent.

That is what lets you design Reedford’s first day.