Elon Musk’s SpaceX has just acquired up to 14MHz of paired spectrum in the 800MHz band nationwide in the US, from Grain Management. Musk says this is “the last critical piece of the spectrum puzzle needed for SpaceX to provide complete phone coverage in America”. So the aim here is clear. Use Starlink satellites to provide mobile phone coverage outdoors, and this 800MHz spectrum to provide indoor coverage.
Most existing smartphones already support this band. Starlink Mobile will also use its existing global 2GHz mid-band spectrum for high-speed, high-capacity coverage in the US (mainly outdoors). The company plans to pair its satellites with ground-based femtocells to provide 5G mobile coverage.
It says that once it receives regulatory approval for this latest spectrum acquisition, it will “deploy a flexible architecture” combining its “satellite-to-mobile constellation in space with an advanced terrestrial deployment that can seamlessly connect devices everywhere”.
When that happens, Starlink Mobile will be a direct competitor to AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, with better coverage than all of them outdoors, especially in rural and traditionally underserved areas. For this service, SpaceX received approval from the FCC to deploy 15,000 next-generation satellites.
The 800MHz spectrum SpaceX just acquired originated at T-Mobile, which sold it to Grain Management in August in exchange for the latter’s 600MHz spectrum licenses and $2.9 billion in cash.
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