Wireless Carriers Not Worried About Competition from SpaceX
The satellite company sent leaders to MWC this week to tease plans for its Starlink Mobile service.
WASHINGTON, March 5, 2026 – The major mobile carriers aren’t worried about head-to-head competition from SpaceX’s direct-to-cell service, executives said this week.
The satellite company talked up its ambitions for that service, now called Starlink Mobile, at Mobile World Congress earlier this week. SpaceX is ultimately targeting “hundreds of millions” of customers worldwide and aims to provide much faster 150 megabits per second speeds with its next-generation constellation, about 1,200 of which the company aims to launch in 2027.
Executives said the service currently has 10 million active global users served by 650 satellites, which provide service in the U.S. through a partnership with T-Mobile on the carrier’s spectrum. SpaceX is buying airwaves from EchoStar with which it aims to power the next-generation service.
Michael Nicolls, SpaceX’s vice president of satellite engineering, said at MWC the company’s vision was for Starlink Mobile to be “a key component of a hybrid network that includes terrestrial and satellite capabilities.”
“Satellite is complementary to terrestrial networks. It cannot provide the data density that terrestrial networks have,” he said. “But it can augment terrestrial networks in the places where terrestrial networks cannot reach, or when terrestrial networks need additional capacity.”
Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco this week, top executives from Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile said they shared that view and were interested in continuing to partner with satellite operators.
“We still view satellite as an important but complimentary service,” AT&T COO Jeff McElfresh said Tuesday. “It’ll have its place where it is uniquely positioned to perform miracles, actually, and fantastic things. But the amount of traffic growth that we see in the terrestrial networks right now is not slowing down.”
AT&T and Verizon have deals with AST SpaceMobile to provide direct-to-cell connectivity, which AST is aiming to get off the ground this year.
“I do think that the opportunity to work with some of the satellite companies – and I’ve spoken to all of them – to be able to give an offer to our customers where we say ‘You are never without service,’ I think that’s a real value add,” Verizon CEO Dan Schulman said Monday.
But he added there was “a lot that needs to get done” to ensure a high quality of service and compatibility with handsets. Current phones don’t support the airwaves SpaceX is buying, so new models would have to incorporate them for the company’s next-generation service to work.
T-Mobile’s direct-to-cell partnership with SpaceX is already online. It offers basic texting service outside the carrier’s footprint and supports some apps like hiking navigator AllTrails.
“You look at the physics and economics of this, and the amount of spectrum versus the number of towers and the actual capacity that it will have even with all the satellites – it’s a great complimentary category,” T-Mobile CEO Srini Gopalan said Wednesday.
Asked if the carrier would potentially be interested in a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) deal with SpaceX, Gopalan wasn’t enthusiastic. T-Mobile has an MVNO deal with the cable giants allowing them to offer mobile service to mid-size businesses and use T-Mobile’s infrastructure to carry traffic when needed.
“We get into an MVNO when we think there’s an incremental [total addressable market] to go after,” he said. “It’s not clear to me how a partnership with Starlink from an MVNO perspective would fit into those criteria.”
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