Satellite enabled in carrier settings 69.1 (O2 UK) — briefly visible on iOS 26.4

[ramonycajal]

Posting this in case anyone else on O2 UK has seen the same.

Setup:

• iPhone 15 Pro Max on O2 UK with the O2 Satellite add-on active
• Was running iOS 26.4 RC (23E244), then later updated to 26.4 final (23E246)
• Carrier bundle updated from 69.0 to 69.1 via the usual "Carrier Settings Update" prompt

What happened:

1. After updating to carrier settings 69.1 (while still on the RC), a new Satellite option appeared in Settings → Cellular (Mobile Service) under my O2 line. Tapping it opened a "Satellite Data Usage" page with a Satellite toggle and per-app switches (Compass, Maps, Messages, My O2, etc.).
2. Sometime after that — either when moving from 23E244 → 23E246, or overnight — the Satellite option disappeared, despite still being on 69.1.

Out of curiosity I pulled the O2 carrier bundle for iOS 26.4 / 69.1 from Apple's CDN (O2_UK_iPhone.ipcc, overrides_V159.plist) which shows:

• SupportsSatellite: true
• ShowSatelliteSwitch: true
• SatelliteSystemName: "O2 Satellite"
• SatelliteApps: ["uk.co.o2.myo2"]
• SatelliteAccessInfo: {AllowCarrierApp: true}
• SatelliteNoDataSuspendDelayTimeout: 1
• SatelliteSystemTransitionTimeToAllowed: 30

O2's website currently only lists Samsung devices as supported, with iPhone listed as "expected". I also called O2 (their sales team, as they don't have a customer-facing tech support team), and they weren't aware of iPhones being supported at the moment either.

Not clear why it disappeared — either O2's backend briefly allowed iPhones through before correcting it, or something changed between the RC and final build. If it's the latter, it will be interesting to see whether it reappears on iOS 26.5 beta.

 

[skoodlyboop]

This is interesting. How'd you get the carrier bundle? From the ipsw (which I think now has it inside an encrypted disk image?) or is there another way to get it from the CDN? You could compare the carrier bundle and iOS behavior with T-Mobile US since they have a similar satellite service and I imagine there's lots of info online about the rollout of that.

 

[ramonycajal]

Apple maintains a publicly accessible index of carrier bundles at https://s.mzstatic.com/version, which lists the latest .ipcc file for each carrier. I put together a Python script to download the .ipcc from Apple’s servers, extract the files, and read the plists.

Following your suggestion, I also compared the T-Mobile 69.1 bundle against O2’s. The satellite configuration is essentially the same in both — ‘SupportsSatellite’, ‘ShowSatelliteSwitch’, and the rest are all present and enabled. The only difference I can find is ‘SatelliteSystemTransitionTimeToAllowed’, which is 30 seconds on O2 and 5 on T-Mobile.

Not sure what to make of it — the bundle looks fine, so a backend or provisioning change on O2’s side seems more likely, given how close the two bundles are.

Edit: I’ve installed iOS 26.5 Beta 1 (23F5043g), which bumped the O2 carrier settings from 69.1 to 69.5.1. Unfortunately, the satellite features are still missing.