There’s a New Wildcard Haunting Telecom Earnings: Elon Musk’s SpaceX
Even AT&T’s 769,000 internet additions didn’t help, as investors are weighing satellite expansion against carriers’ pricing and bundling advantages
WASHINGTON, Oct. 28, 2026 – Record internet subscriber gains are failing to reassure telecom investors worried about satellite competition, an industry investment analyst said Wednesday.
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Shares of AT&T, the Dallas-based wireless and fiber-optic internet provider, fell after it reported a record 769,000 internet additions on Oct. 21. Rival wireless carriers Verizon and T-Mobile also declined.
Investors are looking beyond those quarterly results to the ambitions of SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite company, three industry observers said during a Broadband Breakfast Live Online panel on Wednesday.
The three major telecom carriers had already faced selling pressure earlier in October after SpaceX agreed to buy investment firm Grain Management’s 800 MegaHertz (MHz) spectrum licenses.
Those licenses authorize the use of low-band airwaves, which carry cellular signals through walls. They would support SpaceX’s effort to make its Starlink Mobile phone-to-satellite service a major U.S. carrier.
“This is the quarter where the results seem not to matter so much,” said David Barden, head of U.S. communication services at investment research firm New Street Research.
Investors are looking beyond subscriber growth
The carriers’ appeal to investors rested partly on predictability, Barden said. A dividend yield of about 4 percent suited a business whose long-term prospects appeared stable. SpaceX has introduced a “cone of uncertainty” around their terminal value, the estimated worth of earnings beyond the period covered by analysts’ detailed forecasts.
Investors are pricing in the wireless and broadband business SpaceX could take from the carriers while giving little credit to opportunities for growth, he said. Even strong results in 2027 would not settle how much of their future revenue SpaceX could capture, he said, and each new spectrum purchase or tower deal would revive that question.
SpaceX spent $19.6 billion on capital projects in the third quarter, most of it on AI computing, compared with AT&T’s $5.1 billion. Last year, it agreed to acquire spectrum licenses from EchoStar, the owner of wireless carrier Boost Mobile, for about $17 billion.
Tim Farrar, president of satellite consulting firm TMF Associates, predicted further deals by SpaceX before year-end, most likely an acquisition of the rest of EchoStar. Its remaining spectrum and cell tower leases could allow SpaceX to assemble a network designed for 20 million to 40 million subscribers, substantially faster than the six years some carriers have suggested.
Barden said he expects SpaceX to pursue additional cellular airwaves in the 600 MHz and 3.5 GigaHertz (GHz) bands and participate in the Federal Communications Commission’s planned upper C-band spectrum auction.
Amazon, which operates the competing Leo satellite network, could respond by acquiring satellite communications provider Viasat for its spectrum, Farrar said.
Starlink’s pricing limits its immediate threat
SpaceX’s ambitions do not make Starlink, its satellite internet service, a low-cost competitor today, Farrar said.
Starlink charges national prices ranging from $55 a month for download speeds of 100 megabits per second to $130 for its highest tier. Cable and fiber providers can adjust prices market by market. A large share of Starlink customers pay $130 on a month-to-month basis, Farrar said, meaning lower prices could encourage existing subscribers to switch to cheaper plans.
Its competitive reach is also narrower than its subscriber count suggests. Farrar estimated that Starlink has about 5 million U.S. subscribers, but only about 2 million had a realistic wired or cellular home internet alternative. Others include customers using portable dishes and households that previously relied on, or bypassed, older satellite internet providers Viasat and Hughes.
The largest terrestrial providers, which deliver service over wired or cellular networks, serve substantially more connections. Cable and internet provider Comcast ended September with 28.3 million residential broadband customers. Verizon reported 17.4 million broadband connections, and AT&T had 16.2 million internet connections.
Bundles give carriers a defense
Carriers are defending their customer relationships through bundles of home internet and mobile service, an approach the industry calls convergence. Among households with AT&T’s fiber or fixed wireless internet, 42.8 percent also subscribe to its wireless service. About 18 percent of Comcast’s residential broadband customers take its Xfinity Mobile wireless service.
Broadband has become a commodity, but it still generates high margins that give providers a strong incentive to retain customers, said Jeff Heynen, vice president at telecom market research firm Dell’Oro Group, the third of the panelists.
Heynen brought a new element to the mix: Bundles expanding beyond Internet and mobile service.
“We’re back in the days of triple play,” he said, referring to packages combining internet, television and telephone service. He predicted “quadruple play and quintuple play” packages with additional consumer services.
Longer payment plans for expensive phones give carriers more time to offer customers perks such as discounted subscriptions to streaming services Netflix or Apple TV, Heynen said. He pointed to T-Mobile’s mix-and-match offerings as an example.
Satellite operators could eventually develop similar packages. Heynen suggested hypothetical offers such as a free year of Amazon’s Prime membership with Leo service or a Starlink discount for owners of Tesla electric vehicles. Once broadband speeds exceed a gigabit per second, he said, price, packaging and reliability become more important in deciding which provider a household keeps.
For now, Farrar said, carriers have an advantage because SpaceX has no ground-based mobile network to bundle with Starlink.
Subscriber gains reveal shifts in broadband competition
Fiber gains provided a concrete measure of the competition. During the discussion, Clark cited AT&T’s quarterly additions of 442,000 fiber subscribers and 327,000 fixed wireless subscribers. Verizon added 155,000 fiber subscribers and 159,000 fixed wireless subscribers. Fiber delivers internet through fiber-optic lines, while fixed wireless supplies home internet over cellular networks.
Those results are accessible with Broadband Breakfast’s Premium Charts and Data, available to paid Breakfast Club members. The tools track subscriber totals and quarterly additions across providers and broadband technologies, allowing readers to follow the competitive shifts discussed by the panel.
Fixed wireless helped carriers win back customers who had moved to cable during the pandemic. But that service is now “vulnerable,” Heynen said.
Carriers have slowed orders for fixed wireless equipment and are unlikely to exceed their subscriber targets for the service, he said. AT&T has positioned fixed wireless as an interim service until fiber becomes available, while Heynen expects T-Mobile to keep expanding its fiber joint ventures.
Cable remains under pressure at both ends of the market. Comcast lost 144,000 residential broadband customers, compared with 91,000 a year earlier. Fixed wireless has attracted customers at the lower end, while fiber has drawn those seeking higher performance, Heynen said.
AI demand could favor terrestrial networks
Barden argued that investors focused on competition for existing subscribers may be overlooking SpaceX’s larger objective of connecting a coming wave of devices to artificial intelligence systems.
In that scenario, SpaceX would pursue a much larger connectivity market, with disruption to today’s carriers a secondary concern. Barden sees room for both satellite and terrestrial providers to gain.
Farrar questioned whether that vision supports the investment case for satellites. If data consumption rises a thousandfold, fiber and ground-based 5G cellular networks would carry that traffic far more efficiently, he said.
Heynen also distinguished demand from connected devices, such as drones, from the needs of households. AI agents, software that carries out tasks on a user’s behalf, could run continuously in homes and generate sustained uploads and downloads. That traffic would favor fiber and upgraded cable over satellite networks with more limited capacity, he said.
He expects terrestrial networks to carry most traffic, with low-Earth orbit satellites serving particular uses.
“I don’t think that this is an existential threat to the terrestrial broadband community or the mobile community,” Farrar said.
