Skylo Technologies has reached a major milestone in satellite communications: the successful integration of its Voice Gateway for Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) voice calling on its commercial network.
With over 8 million activated devices and regulatory approvals in 36 countries, Skylo is now enabling voice calls over satellite — directly from smartphones — at an unprecedented scale.
This breakthrough is powered by the Skylo Voice Gateway, which uses Fraunhofer’s AI-based NESC voice codec to deliver high-quality calls while dramatically reducing data usage — achieving over 10 times the efficiency compared to traditional cellular voice. The Skylo Voice Gateway seamlessly translates satellite signals into SIP/RTP protocols, allowing Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) to integrate satellite voice into their existing infrastructure.
A key enabler of this innovation is Fraunhofer’s NESC speech codec, a best-in-class, AI-powered ultra low-bitrate codec that ensures optimal voice quality at scale and even under the most constrained satellite bandwidth conditions. While current speech codecs work well for terrestrial 4G/5G voice services, they typically require 13 kbit/s or more to achieve good audio quality – a fact which makes them ill-suited or impractical for large-scale applications such as NTN. Fraunhofer NESC, as highlighted here, reduces the required bitrates to 1 kbit/s or less and therefore can help to shape the future of satellite voice services.
Go here to see the a video showcasing real-world NTN voice calling over Skylo’s network.
For more technical details and insights, read the full blog on Skylo’s website.