T-Mobile, SpaceX to Launch Direct-to-Device Service in July

WASHINGTON, Feb. 10, 2025 – T-Mobile announced with a Super Bowl commercial that its satellite texting service with SpaceX will launch in July. That service is provided on T-Mobile’s spectrum, but the satellite company is angling for some more spectrum of its own.

The service will allow customers to send and receive texts in areas not reached by T-Mobile’s terrestrial mobile network. It will also eventually be made available to non-T-Mobile customers for $20 per month. A beta is available for free until the commercial plans roll out.

AT&T and Verizon have similar deals with AST, but the services have been slower to get off the ground. 

Spectrum battle?

On Jan. 30, SpaceX asked the Federal Communications Commission to enable sharing in the upper C-Band, 3.98-4.2 GigaHertz, used in large part by satellite companies SES and Intelsat for TV broadcasting. The company wanted authorization for satellite providers to use the bottom 20 megahertz of that for direct-to-device service, similar to what it’s offering with T-Mobile’s spectrum, and the rest for broadband.

Last week the agency announced it would be voting later this month on whether to open an inquiry on putting the spectrum to “more intensive use,” which the 5G industry took as a clear-cut win. The big mobile carriers occupy the rest of the C-band spectrum and have been eager to get more exclusive, high-power spectrum licenses in the pipeline – the opposite of SpaceX’s sharing proposal.

Analysts were quick to flag the SpaceX petition as setting up a potential battle between Elon Musk’s satellite company and the wireless carriers, both of whom FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has been friendly to.

Blair Levin, policy advisor at New Street and former FCC chief of staff, wrote in an investor note that Carr has a much longer history of supporting more spectrum in the hands of the carriers, but noted Musk’s ballooning power in Washington. The world’s richest man has been leading the Trump administration’s efforts to shutter entire agencies and push out swathes of federal workers.

The draft text of the order, released late last week did seem to still favor the 5G industry Tim Farrar, founder of telecom and satellite consulting firm TMF Associates, posted on X, which Musk also owns. Aside from a general reference to new terrestrial or satellite-based users, “it looks like at most only minor tweaks were made to respond to SpaceX's request,” he wrote.

Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Project at New America, said the spectrum isn't ideal for the direct-to-device services SpaceX is contemplating – it doesn’t punch through obstacles quite as well as lower bands. But he noted the company has pending petitions before the FCC asking for permission to launch more satellites, bring their orbits lower, and raise their power levels.

“So what does all that do? Well, that makes this particular spectrum much more potent for direct-to-device,” he said. 

Calabrese said the 5G industry is very likely to get some more airwaves to work with, even if SpaceX gets a slice for satellite. 

“There will certainly be a big tranche that will go to extend the mobile carriers’ spectrum,” he said. “It’s contiguous, it’s greenfield, it’s the most logical place to give them more spectrum.”

In addition to the drawn out regulatory process that’s barely started, Congress would have to restore the FCC’s ability to auction off spectrum for that to happen. The agency is set to vote in February on rules for reselling a set of licenses, but that’s a one-off authorized to help pay for getting blacklisted Chinese suppliers out of rural networks.