Viasat has moved satellite connectivity one step closer to becoming a native vehicle feature rather than an emergency gadget bolted on after purchase.

During the 5G Automotive Association Meeting Week in Munich, the company demonstrated what it describes as the first satellite voice call fully integrated into a BMW Group vehicle platform. The call was initiated and managed through the infotainment system of a BMW iX3, rather than through a separate satellite handset or smartphone application.

That detail matters. Satellite messaging has already started appearing in consumer devices. Integrating the service into a car’s own connectivity architecture, controls and user experience is a more difficult — and much more commercially relevant — step.

From demo call to vehicle feature

The Munich showcase builds on a Viasat and Cubic³ demonstration announced for Mobile World Congress 2026, where the partners showed satellite-enabled voice calling for connected vehicles over a 3GPP-compliant non-terrestrial network. This time, the technology was connected to BMW Group’s in-vehicle architecture, making the car itself the interface.

The technical stack brings together Viasat’s L-band satellite network, Cubic³’s connected-vehicle and eSIM capabilities, Qualcomm Technologies’ Snapdragon Auto 5G Modem-RF Gen 2 platform and Fraunhofer IIS’s NESC AI voice codec.

Voice is carried using NB-IoT, a low-bandwidth cellular protocol adapted for satellite connectivity. That sounds counterintuitive — NB-IoT was not designed for long conversations or entertainment — but Fraunhofer’s codec is the clever part. NESC can reduce the bitrate needed for intelligible, high-quality speech from roughly 13 kbit/s or more to around 1 kbit/s or less, making voice practical across constrained satellite links.

“This demonstration reflects broader industry excitement to ensure consistent, resilient satellite capabilities for next-generation vehicles,”

said Sandeep Moorthy, Viasat’s senior vice president for advanced non-terrestrial solutions.

Why automakers care

A connected car is only as connected as the network beneath it. Motorways and cities are generally well served; mountain roads, rural regions, border areas and long stretches of sparsely populated territory are not always so cooperative.

For automakers, satellite fallback could support emergency calling, roadside assistance, short messages, vehicle tracking and essential fleet communications when terrestrial coverage disappears. It is less about letting passengers stream films in the wilderness and more about ensuring that a safety-critical connection does not vanish at the worst possible moment.

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The standards angle is equally important. 3GPP Release 17 introduced normative support for non-terrestrial networks, including NB-IoT and eMTC satellite access, while later releases continue to improve NTN performance and mobility. Standards-based systems give carmakers a more realistic route to scale than proprietary hardware tied to one narrow service.

Still, this remains a research demonstration. The announcement contains no production model, launch date, pricing structure or confirmed geographic service footprint. Satellite links also generally need a usable view of the sky, and the current NB-IoT approach is designed for low-data-rate services, not as a replacement for 4G or 5G broadband.

A crowded road

Viasat is not alone in pursuing this market. Skylo has already worked with BMW Group, Deutsche Telekom, Qualcomm, Harman, Fraunhofer IIS and Cubic³ on automotive satellite demonstrations covering emergency messaging and seamless switching between cellular and satellite service through a unified SIM. BMW i Ventures also invested in Skylo in 2024, describing satellite connectivity as a likely standard for future vehicles.

Intelsat and Cubic³, meanwhile, completed a vehicle satellite-connectivity test in 2025 focused on linking terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks through Cubic³’s software platform.

The competitive difference is therefore becoming less about proving that a car can contact a satellite. Several companies have done that. The real race is to make the handover invisible, integrate services into the vehicle’s native interface, secure regulatory approval across markets and give automakers one manageable connectivity layer.

What comes next

Viasat says future 5G New Radio satellite services could eventually support richer applications, including higher-bandwidth communication and smoother roaming between terrestrial and satellite networks. The standards roadmap supports that direction, although commercial scale will depend on compatible hardware, satellite capacity, spectrum arrangements and agreements among automakers, mobile operators and NTN providers.

For everyday urban drivers, this capability may rarely be noticed and may not justify a premium on its own. For rural motorists, remote workers, commercial fleets and anyone travelling beyond reliable mobile coverage, however, a car that can place an emergency voice call without a terrestrial signal is considerably more than a novelty.

Conclusion

The BMW iX3 demonstration is not the arrival of satellite calling in production cars. It is something more useful at this stage: evidence that satellite voice can be treated as part of the vehicle, not as an external rescue accessory.

Skylo, Intelsat, Viasat and their automotive partners are converging on the same idea — cellular connectivity should remain the default, while satellite becomes the quiet fallback underneath it. Viasat’s progress in Munich stands out because the voice experience reached the dashboard itself.

The winner will not necessarily be the company with the loudest satellite claim. It will be the ecosystem that makes the switch between road network and space network so uneventful that the driver never has to think about it.