The story of Starlink is very similar to the story of SpaceX itself. Elon Musk created a company that revolutionized moving satellites, and astronauts, into orbit and monopolized the industry. Other players both at home and abroad have been doing their best to catch up, but Musk has a big head start at this point.
Starlink is another business that, just a few years ago, many people were claiming would never work. But by leveraging his access to low-Earth orbit, Musk has put up more than 11,000 satellites. In addition to providing an important backup to easily blocked GPS satellites, Musk has also gathered 13 million paying customers, including a lot of people who never had reliable internet service before.
How many years have the telecoms spent claiming to have the largest network? But no one has a larger network than Starlink. You can use it Antartica and in the middle of the ocean if you have one of their terminals. Most of the major air carriers are already on board. And, thanks to a partnership with T-Mobile, users can now use Starlink for direct-to-cell service with no extra hardware. But there is a limitation. Because regular phones have a limited radio range, it requires special satellites to be able to hear them from space. Generally, the handsets can only be used this way outside in an area free of obstacles.
However, earlier this month Starlink announced that it was making plans to expand direct-to-cell service on its own.
SpaceX announced an agreement to acquire a nationwide low-band spectrum license portfolio of up to 14 megahertz of paired spectrum in the 800 MHz band. This prime low-band spectrum addresses one of the key remaining technical gaps that will pave the way for Starlink Mobile to become a major mobile carrier in the US.
Once we receive final FCC approval, Starlink Mobile will deploy a flexible architecture combining our satellite-to-mobile constellation in space with an advanced terrestrial deployment that can seamlessly connect devices everywhere. While Starlink Mobile’s global 2 GHz mid-band spectrum will provide high-bandwidth capacity in the United States, this new low-band spectrum will provide a coverage layer that ensures Starlink Mobile’s signal penetrates through obstacles, such as walls, and can provide service to customers’ devices even when they are in buildings. Critically, most existing mobile devices already support this underused band.
So the big picture is that Starlink is moving into the cell service game in a big way and today a group of cell providers in Europe teamed up to try to compete with what Musk is offering.
Four of Europe’s biggest telecom companies are joining forces to challenge Elon Musk’s SpaceX as European leaders push to reduce the continent’s reliance on American tech.
Germany’s Deutsche Telekom, France’s Orange, the United Kingdom’s Vodafone Group, and Spain’s Telefónica announced Monday that they signed a letter of intent to explore a joint bid for satellite spectrum. These radio frequencies connect mobile phones directly to satellites instead of relying on cell towers...
Under the proposed partnership, the four companies would establish ground infrastructure and operations in Europe while teaming up with a satellite provider. Other mobile carriers across Europe would also be able to use the network to offer satellite-to-phone services to their customers.
Basically, they're building out the ground service to try to compete with Starlink but the satellite part of the service is still pretty vague. Here's what the joint press release said.
As part of the project, the four operators plan to establish key ground network infrastructure as well as critical coordination and monitoring functions in Europe, without investing directly in a satellite constellation. This will be provided by a satellite partner still to be selected.
That seems like a pretty big hole in their plan. The Financial Times suggests a French company may be their best option.
...instead of developing their own satellite constellation, they would partner with an existing provider, which is yet to be selected.
This could pose challenges for the proposal, with most satellite constellations being operated by US or Chinese companies. French satellite operator Eutelsat has developed a large-scale constellation but the company is far behind Starlink, which has more than 11,000 satellites in orbit.
According to Google, Eutelsat Group has 634 Gen 1 satellites in orbit but all of them require a terminal system. So that's the buildout the European telecoms are talking about. They'll add terminals to existing towers or create new towers to allow for use of the satellites. But they won't be able to offer direct-to-cell service of the kind Starlink is already offering.
Of course Eutelsat could launch new satellites given enough time, but once again Elon Musk's company has a big head start. The only way the Europeans are going to be able to catch up is by protecting their markets. That's something the EU has already talked about doing.
In May, the European Commission proposed reserving the part of its spectrum band that allows smartphones to connect directly to satellites for European players. The so-called 2 GHz frequency band is currently used by two American companies, Viasat and EchoStar, whose licences expire next year...
The Commission’s plans have been fiercely criticised by SpaceX, which operates the Starlink platform.
So we'll have to wait and see how this all works out.