SpaceX's satellite internet arm is moving from rural coverage gaps to direct competition with America's biggest wireless carriers.
Shares in AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile fell sharply on Friday after Elon Musk's Starlink agreed to acquire nationwide mobile spectrum, a move that signals the satellite internet service is pushing beyond remote coverage and into direct competition with America's established wireless carriers.
Starlink has agreed to buy up to 14 megahertz of paired spectrum in the 800 megahertz band from Grain Management, an investment firm specialising in digital infrastructure, although the financial terms were not disclosed.
Low band frequency
The low-band frequencies are significant because signals in this range travel farther and penetrate buildings more effectively than higher-frequency alternatives, which has been a persistent limitation of satellite-based phone services.
The acquisition, which requires final approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), would allow SpaceX to combine its satellite network with terrestrial wireless infrastructure to provide mobile connectivity both indoors and outdoors across the United States.
Additional bandwidth
The newly acquired spectrum would sit alongside Starlink Mobile's existing 2 gigahertz spectrum, which handles data capacity, with the low-band frequencies adding the coverage depth needed to compete with ground-based networks.
The FCC also approved SpaceX's next-generation Starlink Mobile satellite constellation this week, authorising the company to launch 15,000 satellites optimised for direct-to-device connectivity, with more than 100 times the bandwidth of its current generation.
Together, the spectrum deal and the constellation approval mark a significant shift in Starlink's ambitions, from filling in rural coverage gaps to competing more directly with carriers that have spent decades and hundreds of billions of dollars building terrestrial networks.
