Having spent many years battling over spectrum rights, the cellular and satellite communities are looking to adopt a common and integrated approach to some 5G services. One of the important aspects of the 3GPP Release 17 standards, which should be frozen in mid-2022, is a non-terrestrial networks (NTN) element that will enable Release 17-compliant devices to link directly to compatible satellites without a ground-based cellular connection. Commercial devices supporting the latest specs should come to market by mid-2023, given support from ecosystem players such as major chip providers, like Qualcomm. These smartphones and other units would, for the first time, be able to receive a connection from a satellite, so that users would not be confined to expensive proprietary satellite…