Analysts Mull SpaceX’s Reported Interest in 80,000 Tower Leases
The company could be bluffing to secure an MVNO, or aiming to build a solution for autonomous vehicles and robotics, analysts said
WASHINGTON, Oct. 26, 2026 – SpaceX is looking to hang radios on 80,000 wireless towers across the country, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The infrastructure would support its Starlink Mobile service, in addition to 15,000 satellites the company is planning to launch.
Analysts said it was difficult to tell whether the satellite operator was taking a posture of maximum competition in an effort to secure a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) deal, which would allow it to largely avoid a costly buildout and offer service on one of the terrestrial carriers’ infrastructure.
BNP Paribas analyst Sam McHugh said in an investor note that if SpaceX actually signed lease agreements on 80,000 sites, it would nullify the cost savings of an MVNO.
“In other words, this is the last bluff one would pull to try to convince one of the Big Three carriers to break ranks and agree to an MVNO,” he wrote.
New Street Research’s David Barden also said an MVNO was likely still on the table.
“In our conversations with the company, they continue to say they would like to secure an MVNO from one of the US carriers. If they get an MVNO, a full tower buildout is likely reduced,” he said in an investor note. “They have shared a buildout and MVNO are not mutually exclusive, but to what end?”
Wolfe Research analyst Peter Supino said in a Monday investor note that SpaceX’s mobile ambitions might be mostly about serving autonomous cars, robots, and drones.
McHugh agreed, and said an MVNO focused on those uses, and excluding phones, might be more palatable to a carrier. He said T-Mobile might be a good fit because of its “more advanced 5G network and relatively low broadband exposure.”
The carriers have each repeatedly said they don’t want to extend an MVNO to SpaceX. On Verizon’s earnings call Monday, CEO Dan Schulman said it would take several years and hundreds of billions for SpaceX to build a network and become a competitor.
On SpaceX’s earnings call last week, before the Bloomberg story, executives reiterated they planned to build terrestrial infrastructure and said that could include towers and tiny “femtocell” radios on existing Starlink mounts.
Analysts have said using femtocells alone wouldn’t be feasible for achieving competitive mobile coverage.
But 80,000 towers, combined with 15,000 satellites to serve remote areas not reached by other terrestrial networks, “has a shot at being differentiated enough to make it – albeit without the Spectrum depth of the carriers, which would ultimately limit SpaceX’s subscriber share potential,” McHugh wrote.
TMF Associates founder Tim Farrar posted on X that a likely starting point negotiations with the tower companies would be SpaceX acquiring Dish Wireless’s radios, now sitting unused amid the company’s bankruptcy. Wireless Estimator reported Monday that some smaller tower companies were unsure of whether SpaceX would need all the stranded radios.
On the company’s earnings call, CEO Elon Musk implied the company would give more detail on its mobile plans at some point.
“I think we probably should do a longer presentation on the game plan for Starlink connectivity and why we think it will ultimately be a business that generates several hundred billion dollars in revenue a year, because you are missing some of the pieces that we know about internally,” he said. “I think we should probably describe that in more detail in a forum that's not limited to a few minutes at an earnings call.”
Debt deal
Musk also posted on X Sunday that SpaceX had closed on $40 billion in financing for chips to power its AI models. He said lenders were increasingly not interested in extending credit to companies that rely on data centers for their revenue.
The company posted a formal announcement Monday, calling it the largest AI chip financing deal ever.
