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Posted on 10/09/2026 6:45:35 AM PDT by Red Badger
SpaceX announced an agreement on Thursday to “acquire a nationwide low-band spectrum license portfolio” that will establish the foundation to help the company become a “major mobile carrier” in the United States.
“With this new spectrum and our Gen2 constellation, Starlink Mobile can ensure Americans have access to high-speed mobile broadband no matter where they are,” the company stated.
CNBC has more:
Shares of AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile tumbled in extended trading.
The deal involves the acquisition of a spectrum portfolio from Grain Management, which specializes in digital infrastructure, and is subject to approval by the Federal Communications Commission. SpaceX said in a statement that it’s a “license portfolio of up to 14 megahertz of paired spectrum in the 800 MHz band.”
“This prime low-band spectrum addresses one of the key remaining technical gaps that will pave the way for Starlink Mobile to become a major mobile carrier in the US,” SpaceX said.
“Very big deal,” Elon Musk commented.
“This is the last critical piece of the spectrum puzzle needed for SpaceX to provide complete phone coverage in America,” Musk said in another post.
“The incumbent wireless carriers have been vocal in expressing skepticism that SpaceX’s network will be able to match the quality of their networks,” William Blair analysts said, according to Reuters.
“We expect SpaceX to offer a very compelling Starlink broadband and Starlink Mobile bundle. The company may also include Grok in the package,” it added.
Reuters shared further:
“We are going to see more investment, more opportunities for a range of providers, and America leading the world in next-gen technologies — to the benefit of consumers all across the country,” FCC Chair Brendan Carr said in response to the deal between SpaceX and Grain.
Grain CEO David Grain said the deal has “the potential to change where and how Americans connect.”
Most existing mobile handsets support the 800 MHz frequency band, eliminating the need for consumers to purchase proprietary satellite phones.
Verizon spokesman Rich Young noted there were still hurdles after SpaceX’s spectrum purchase. “This company can have tons of spectrum available, but if they do not have the network to use it, it doesn’t matter. It’s just empty airwaves,” Young said.
The FCC also approved Starlink Mobile’s Gen2 constellation application this week, authorizing SpaceX to launch 15,000 satellites that are optimized for 2 GHz spectrum globally.
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We’ve been here before. Massive vertical integration and massive corporate size in the “Gilded Age” — petroleum, railroads, steel, communications, banking.
But, even though Musk’s companies show high market shares in a few of those niches and vertical integration, they do not yet match the near-total domestic control that triggered the major trust-busting cases in the late 19th century.
Can the walky talky spectrum handle up to a gig or more of data/sec?
I would rather carry Elon’s phone than ATT’s. I am sick of paying $65 a month.
“I already knew this because that’s my area of work”
Does this mean that today’s cell phones will work with the satellites?
I've seen forecasts that predict it to be $1,400.00 a share by 2031.
The Cell Companies needed a good shake as they are taking their customers for granted and ignoring a part of the market which thanks to their selective service areas that once had cell service were left high and dry like me. I use T-Mobile Cell in WIFI Mode at home thankfully it works through my Starlink WIFI.
AT&T is a shadow of what it used to be. When my Dad passed and I inherited his stocks they were double their value then than now.
With AT&T ending landline which they've been doing for a decade by simply not repairing the cell companies became the only choice. Cable companies cover even less than cell. Cell companies stopped expanding especially in rural communities {I had 3 bars 3Glite until it was ended} to No Bars.
Like him or hate him Musk has seen the potential others didn't have any desire to offer service too. Now Cable, Cell, and AT&T are crying? Well boo hoo hoo on them I don't care.
Watch the video on that yesterday and was excited that a commercial ship, any ship, had been constructed in an American shipyard...
I get nervous riding with my daughter and/or her husband while riding in their Tesla cars in self-driving mode...
Now I see that the car-transporting ships are being loaded by the cars themselves, without any drivers... Yikes!
More to come. I'm still a big fan of a coordinated (gubmint sanctioned but not nationalized) fiber buildout, with the legacy buried (and not) copper lines pulled up as salvage to help pay for it. One line, telephony, streaming, one regulated price.
I had a Nextel phone for a year or two around 2001. They were pretty cool. Was doing some early computer-telephony switches and that was really handy when on site doing installations.
The next five years are going to be quite a time to be around. Permanent US human lunar base, ubiquitous self-driving cars for hire, even here in The Boonies, maybe robot farm labor, autonomous robots building the first Mars colony, (and now the buried lead) Starlink on all the cell towers...
By way of analogy, the digital pocket calculator went from costing a lot (during my high school years, the advanced math calculators with all the trig functions ran $125-150) in the mid-1970s, to being given away (the 4 function plus sometimes PI ones) with a tank of gas circa 1981.
The possibly apocryphal story I recall about the transistor was how the first license from Bell Labs was dealt to a Japanese company. 'Just out of curiousity, what are you going to use it for?' 'Portable radios.' 'Yeah, okay.'
They proved in 2024 the V1 F2F at 2ghz works inside their main engineer on the project posted stuff from his dinning room table directly to X via satellite. So they know at least single family homes works, he also had it in his pocket and inside a Tesla too working. The V3 says have 7 meter plus wide antennas and that’s if they don’t fold them at all.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/no-direct-satellite-view-needed-cellular-starlink-phone-gets-signal-in
They can and probably will integrate a 2ghz and 800mhz chip set into every starlink dish and mini too. They already have triple band Wi-Fi in them. Each one then becomes a microcell base station in every rooftop they drop one on or a consumer installs it will be a separate network slice set up with a firewall and VPN completely invisible to the user. They could go the way of World Mobile and offer blockchain credits to host airnodes or just bury it in the TOS that they get to use a slice for backhaul use.
This would make every starlink dish everywhere instantly a airnode and with the 2ghz and 800mhz chip set also a 5G base too.
The power levels are such that 800mhz reaches 1-2 miles from a node and 2ghz 1500 feet or so and inside 100m Wi-Fi at 2.4ghz takes over, or 5ghz or 6ghz too. Using a passport type auth and internal VPN the phones would jump seamlessly from any or all open bands you set up the starlink mobile app to prioritize Wi-Fi first any open Wi-Fi at that all pipped down that VPN pipe the user never sees its seamless. No open Wi-Fi look for Starlink Fi, none of that look for 2ghz Starlink mobile, at the 1500ft mark fall back to 800mhz, only then if no other starlink dish based node is detected jump to 2ghz D2C from a bird overhead. 99% in urban and suburban areas would never hit the D2C sat links it would all be K/KU band back haul via the starlink dish.
This is exactly how the FCC was filed as a hybrid config.
They should partner with World Mobile on their HALE drone nodes they fly at 20km high have a 3 meter wide phased array and can loiter over a city for weeks while putting out 450 pencil beams smaller than a city block all from bear space where V/E/W bands let you have terabyte of data pipe up and down well clear of any weather as at 70000 ft you are above the tropo.
You need 3 HALE drones to cover all of the Texas triangle of DFW AUS HOU plus all the areas in a 200 mile radius of said HALE drone the D2C sat do the truly rural zones. And V3 real starlink does the backhaul from the millions of starlink dishes scattered all over urban rooftops and suburban homes too.
It should also be pointed out that if every Tesla and more importantly every robocab and Cybercab has a starlink mini dish on its roof with that 800mhz/2ghz chip set plus triple band Wi-Fi they form a vast moving mesh network all using V3 starlink K/KU bands as the backhaul freeing the D2C to only do truly rural zones, add in a couple of HALE drones and you can blanket a city from above with 400 meter wide beams nearly straight down into urban canyons at 5ghz , 1.9km at 2ghz and 3 ish km at 800 for deep penetration into buildings and even parking decks with the DBi a 3 meter wide phased array can push.
In short SpaceX could in very short order dominant state seized areas and every rural zone on earth. To start would only take a OTA update adding a dedicated network slice, firewall and VPN over triple band Wi-Fi that with a starlink passport system every starlink mobile phone instantly and natively connects too. Millions of nodes go online instantly with a OTA you just add the 5G chip sets to all the new dishes being made and USB dongle the existing ones. Launch 3 HALE drones to cover a nearly Texas sized area with pencil beams a sat could never hope to match in DBi
SpaceX can do something no one else can.
They already use software defined radios in their birds. With SDR you can do cognitive radios especially the double blind listen before talk form of CR. With FPLA and millisecond level ODFM and FHSS tech you can use white space radio as in every unused frequency in an area in a millisecond by millisecond level. You don’t beg for spectrum you use it when it’s empty and instantly vacate it when it’s not. The arguments of spectral inference vanish with tight ODFM and FHSS from millisecond level white space radio. You literally do not have a legal interference claim when the waves are open and an incumbent user is not on air by shifting so rapidly any receiver not timed to the nanosecond via GPS time sync a regular receiver misses it as well as a blip of cosmic background level noise. Also every guard band that’s never used with modern tight ODFM is wide open all the time,do no harm is the law. Be a good neighbor and you by default cannot do harm. This is especially true for rural and open ocean areas where the incumbents never has rights or could even transmit if they wanted too as they lack the satellite infrastructure to do so. My words would be how many divisions does AT&T have in the Gulf or Pacific. Radio spectrum belongs to all of us it’s a cosmic right we agree to let an agency manage it for best use but modern tech makes them largely redundant.
Instead of 15mhz here and 50 there it should be how do we fill in 400mhz-24ghz of spectrum on a millisecond by millisecond level while not wiping out any important continuous users double blind listen before talk solves that with tight beams and phased array only helping. Active emitter power loop control seals the deal.
Shhhhhhhhh!............
“I hate the way it speaks. I hate the way it “explains” things”
Same here....i see it in print and instantly that youtube ai voice starts narrating in my head.
people have been bugging musk for years to create a mobile phone. When the mobile phone network is set up, then it will be time to develop a mobile phone. He’ll need one on the moon and mars.
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