In a move that will surprise absolutely no one who has watched Elon Musk's career arc, SpaceX has announced it's coming for the Big Three wireless carriers. During the Q&A portion of the company's first earnings call, President Gwynne Shotwell and CEO Elon Musk revealed plans to build a terrestrial mobile network that will compete head-to-head with T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon.
"The spectrum that we purchased from EchoStar does have terrestrial components, so we definitely intend to build out the terrestrial component," said Shotwell, confirming that SpaceX will actually build the ground infrastructure needed to make your phone work. You know, the boring stuff. "You will have not only the capacity from the satellites themselves, but you will have a buildout of the terrestrial, basically the hardware and systems necessary to make a true mobile service exactly what you want it to be."
SpaceX already offers a direct-to-device service called Starlink Mobile, which currently piggybacks on carrier networks like T-Mobile to provide limited messaging and data in dead zones. But Shotwell promises the service will be "100 times better" once SpaceX starts using the bandwidth from EchoStar and next-generation Starlink Mobile (V2) satellites, which "will start flying next year." Because why settle for 99 times better?
The catch? SpaceX only acquired 65 megahertz of spectrum from EchoStar, which is a pittance compared to what the Big Three hold. To build a nationwide network, SpaceX either needs to buy more spectrum or get creative. And creative they are. Shotwell teased some "great and new ideas" for ground infrastructure, including strapping cellular base stations to Starlink dishes:
"Let me give a little hint. And that is you could put a base station, a cellular base station on the gear that holds a Starlink broadband dish. So you can have kind of these little femtocells around the country, and you deploy that as you need it."
Elon, never one to let a good point pass without expanding on it, added: "Yeah, that point is probably worth just a few more words, because this is quite an important point. Instead of having to deploy these very expensive and difficult to locate, large cellular base stations, we feel reasonably confident that we can deploy a large number of small stations. Essentially, they're really just Starlink dishes that also provide connectivity in the mobile spectrum bands, and have them be all over the place."
So the plan is to turn every Starlink dish into a mini cell tower, leveraging the fact that they're already on roofs with clear views. "Providing connectivity that is, we think, probably better and higher bandwidth than what is currently available from cellular providers. This is an important point."
SpaceX's ambitions have been rumored since before its IPO, with Shotwell telling investors about plans to sell mobile contracts directly to consumers. The US wireless market, dominated by AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon, is worth an estimated $600 billion annually. And SpaceX wants a slice. "I anticipate us to be able to acquire quite a few of their customers because I think our service will be better," Shotwell said, with the confidence of someone who has never had to deal with customer support.
So, will SpaceX actually disrupt the wireless industry, or is this just another Muskian pipe dream? Either way, the carriers should probably start sweating. And maybe invest in some better customer service, just in case.