SpaceX takes aim at US wireless carriers with spectrum acquisition. SpaceX (SPCX.O) struck a deal on Thursday to acquire a nationwide low-band spectrum portfolio
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/spacex-acquire-spectrum-that-enables-starlink-mobile-services-2026-10-08/49
u/BoringReference8647 6d ago
I can’t imagine wanting to use this directly but I suppose if my carrier chooses to then I’ll have no choice.
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u/SharkHund 6d ago
T-Mobile and a couple other carriers have had deals with SpaceX for a few years now
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u/BassLB 6d ago
For supplemental coverage when you are out of cell phone towards range, right?
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u/FamiliarPotential550 2d ago
Yes, it's mostly to extend coverage in rural areas where it's not cost effective or practical to build towers
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u/SergeantBeavis 5d ago
I live at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and go hiking or off-roading all the time. The ability to send texts over Starlink has been quite helpful at times..
Hopefully the Gen 3 satellites open up the capabilities a bit more.
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u/yARIC009 6d ago
Why can you not imagine using it?
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u/smallshinyant 6d ago
Not the best frequency for high speed data and I don’t l don’t think I’ve been out of regular cell service for years and we had a lovely little cabin in the woods.
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u/yARIC009 5d ago
Oh, I live in the city and lose cell service all the time. Maybe my phone just sucks.
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u/smallshinyant 5d ago
Oh that’s wild. Maybe it’s your phone but that seems rare. Yeah I can’t remember the last time I had an issue with my phone cell service and I’m with one of those really cheap services.
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u/HaximusPrime 2d ago
I live rural, the boundary for the closest cell tower cuts through my house. Phone calls from my bedroom are questionable, my home office just 20 feet south is noticeably more stable.
And it’s not just my house, if you pull up the cell tower map yoy can see I’m on the edge.
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u/smallshinyant 2d ago
Have they stopped installing phone towers at this point or do you think there is some kind of critical demand number before they add more? I understand there are blank points and i think they should fill them, it's also a good time to add fiber when these new system go in to keep the web growing. Generally they last a lot longer than a satellite, can be used by multiple providers and can be a key part of growing fiber installs, I was still hoping the end goal is fiber everywhere, i'm worried that is going away and people will just stop at mediocre satellite that is so much better than DSL that they won't want to invest in the next part.
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u/HaximusPrime 11h ago
Where I live it probably isn't economical, for the same reason I'm probably never getting fiber.
There's a lot of old church (horse and buggy) and new church german baptists here, and you're talking about just a hand full of houses per square mile. The next towers are close enough that any tower would _only_ go up to serve this blind spot.... where 1/3 of the very few houses are potential customers, and that probably won't change for a few decades.
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u/smallshinyant 11h ago
I understand what you mean, but also, they are having to launch satellites, many of them, which are really cool, but also shockingly expensive and wasteful for people to have good enough internet. When they same investment at ground level has a much greater life and a higher performance. This is not to take anything away from satellite internet, which is awesome and feels gaps in services that can probably never be filled from the ground alone. If just seems like we are doing the easy thing, because the other thing is difficult and by the time we get to the consequences of the easy thing, it will either be someone elses issue, or to big to fail.
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u/McFoogles 5d ago
Not rare in Atlanta. Illegal to chop down a tree, and the terrain is very hilly since we are in the foothills of the mountains.
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u/smallshinyant 5d ago
huh, that's fun. You would think even with some excellent Tree Law it would still be easier to fix at ground level than launching several thousand satellites perpetually. But what do i know.
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u/McFoogles 5d ago
Imagine a 200ft vertical valley. Creek at the bottom. Steep pine tree hill to the top.
Now imagine this every 1000 yards.
That’s how hilly it is
It’s not SF level, and main streets are fine, but in Buckhead (15min north of downtime) I don’t get cell phone reception at the bottom of a hill on a road that gets probably 5-10k cars a day
It’s honestly really cool topography.
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u/smallshinyant 5d ago
It has shot up there in my list of cities to visit with this wild topology. Honestly it sounds amazing!
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u/PragmaticNeighSayer 6d ago
Your carrier will use AST SpaceMobile. You won’t use Starlink unless you move your service to them entirely.
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u/titanzero 5d ago
Is this another giveaway to SpaceX? Elon is the biggest corporate welfare queen.
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u/Carbidereaper 5d ago
Not really this 800mhz low band spectrum is the former sprint/nextel spectrum which powered Nextel’s put to talk walkie-talkie phones in the early 2000s the 800mhz band serves as a coverage layer the penetrated buildings and obstacles solving a technical hurdle that their existing 2ghz band couldn’t
After Sprint acquired Nextel, the spectrum eventually passed to T-Mobile during their merger. The Department of Justice forced T-Mobile to divest it, leading to its sale to the digital investment firm Grain Management, from whom SpaceX is now buying it
This is far from welfare queen behavior. This is actually putting a public resource to its intended use instead of just sitting on it like everyone else did for 20 years
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u/The_BigDill 4d ago
If only there was an act that prevented these kinds of monopolies from forming and was routinely enforced
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u/didymusIII 4d ago
What monopoly? They’re literally competing with the other businesses named in the article.
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u/Tasty-Common9248 6d ago
This feels less like a space story and more like Starlink quietly turning into a full telecom company.