Starlink Mobile: SpaceX Takes Aim at America’s Wireless Carriers

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Elon Musk now wants to sell phone plans, too: SpaceX is buying nationwide mobile spectrum in the United States, a step toward turning Starlink Mobile into a full-fledged wireless carrier. The company is acquiring a license portfolio of up to 14 megahertz of paired spectrum in the 800 MHz band, SpaceX said. The seller is the infrastructure investor Grain Management, which had only recently acquired the airwaves from T-Mobile. Neither side disclosed the price; Reuters estimated the value at about $8 billion (about €7 billion). “Very big deal,” Mr. Musk wrote on X.

$45 Billion in Market Value Gone

Wall Street got the message right away. The three biggest U.S. wireless carriers lost about $45 billion (about €40 billion) in combined market value, according to the Financial Times. Verizon, which has the most mobile subscribers in the country, fell 6.9 percent, AT&T dropped 8.4 percent and T-Mobile US slid 9.6 percent. SpaceX shares, which have traded since the company’s I.P.O. in June, rose 1.4 percent, adding about $30 billion (about €27 billion) to its valuation. Tower operators gained as well: Crown Castle rose 10.2 percent, American Tower 7.1 percent and SBA Communications 6 percent.

The move did not come out of nowhere. Before the I.P.O., SpaceX executives told investors the company was considering a mobile product for consumers. The I.P.O. prospectus also showed Starlink to be the group’s cash cow. SpaceX laid the groundwork last year, when it agreed to pay $17 billion (about €15 billion) for spectrum licenses from the struggling operator EchoStar.

Satellites Above, Cell Towers Below

Technically, SpaceX is combining space and ground. Its global 2 GHz spectrum, which Starlink satellites beam directly to smartphones, is meant to deliver high bandwidth. The new 800 MHz spectrum adds what the company calls a coverage layer: Low frequencies travel farther and pass through walls more easily, so the signal also reaches phones inside buildings. That is exactly where satellite connections have struggled so far. SpaceX also plans its own terrestrial network. According to the company, most existing phones already support the underused band. Starlink Mobile would then become the first network operator to use both satellite and terrestrial spectrum.

At the same time, the Federal Communications Commission has just approved the next generation of Starlink Mobile. SpaceX may launch up to 15,000 satellites optimized for 2 GHz spectrum. The new V2 satellites are supposed to deliver more than 100 times the bandwidth of the current generation and bring high-speed service to unmodified smartphones worldwide. So far, SpaceX has worked with U.S. carriers such as T-Mobile, which use Starlink to fill dead zones in rural areas. A consumer offering of its own would put SpaceX in direct competition with those partners. Analysts at William Blair expect bundles of Starlink internet, mobile service and possibly xAI’s Grok chatbot.

‘Just Empty Airwaves’

The incumbents are playing it cool. “It’s just empty airwaves,” Rich Young, a Verizon spokesman, told Reuters, arguing that spectrum is useless without a network. Bernstein is also tempering expectations. “Buying spectrum is not a commitment to build a nationwide network,” its analysts wrote, though they added that it makes that option more credible and less expensive. The license transfer still needs approval from the F.C.C.

The established carriers are preparing anyway: T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T formed a satellite joint venture in May, which some analysts see as a response to SpaceX. AST SpaceMobile and Amazon are also pushing into the satellite-to-phone market; Amazon’s acquisition of Globalstar came with a deal with Apple.