Late last week, the Financial Times reported that SpaceX has told investors that it is thinking about launching a retail mobile service in the United States under its Starlink brand.
The Times said the new service was discussed by SpaceX Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell during a recent IPO roadshow.
A decision may already have been made to go forward. “There has been months of speculation over SpaceX’s future mobile plans after it paid $17bn to rival EchoStar for wireless spectrum licences to bolster its Starlink satellite network last September,” the story reads. “Many analysts viewed the deal as laying the groundwork for an eventual retail offering.”
What a SpaceX mobile service could mean
The acquisition of Sprint by T-Mobile six years ago raised questions about the impact on consumer pricing of a move from four to three major carriers. At the time, some experts thought that consumer costs would escalate due to reduced competition.
In 2023, Compass Lexecon released a white paper suggesting that the increases had not come to pass:
“In the US, mobile prices are generally higher than in other OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] countries, albeit around the median when adjusting for quality, cost, and demographic differences between countries. However, the effect of the Sprint/T-Mobile merger on prices was negligible. On the contrary: since the merger, real term revenues per customer — which from a consumers’ perspective is the cost they actually incur — have fallen steadily.”
The mobile world has changed dramatically even in the relatively short time since Sprint was acquired. It’s impossible to predict the impact of adding a fourth mobile service, as SpaceX may be planning. But we may be on the road to finding out.
SpaceX’s Starlink business continues apace, of course, regardless of the company’s mobile plans. Earlier this month, GCI — Alaska’s largest telecommunications company — said that it will use Starlink’s dedicated service with bonded gateways to support connectivity for thousands of customers across several community hubs, including Bethel, Sitka, Kotzebue, and Dillingham.
