What is Elon Musk’s vision for #SpaceX 🚀 ? Is it a cloud firm? A rocket firm? Or a broadband operator? Perhaps all three. On Thursday, Musk signaled he is definitely leaning towards competing with the big mobile operators Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T.
SpaceX announced it has struck a deal to acquire “nationwide low-band spectrum” that, as Musk said in an X post, “is the last critical piece of the spectrum puzzle needed for SpaceX to provide complete phone coverage in America.” Shares of the three mobile incumbents each fell 6% to 7% in after-hours trading after the news.
Let’s get real. Providing reliable cell service is really difficult. Sure, the three incumbents don’t do a perfect job. But we’d bet that SpaceX will find it hard to provide a comparable service by “combining our satellite-to-mobile constellation in space” with the new spectrum, as it said today.
And this won’t come cheap. Aside from the cost of buying the spectrum, SpaceX will need to build cell towers to use the new spectrum. And that’s just to get the service off the ground. It’s great Musk wants to increase competition in the market. But succeeding against the incumbents won’t be a slam dunk.
https://www.spacex.com/up..
