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Comment by basementcat | Hacker News Reader

AST SpaceMobile will be launching a cellular base station satellite on a SpaceX rocket later this year.

Getting regulatory approval for the spectrum is one of the hardest problems, the hardest non-technical one. T-Mobile agreeing to allocate some of their spectrum to SpaceX is something that will probably happen with other carriers later down the line. AT&T and Verizon in the US are probably going to explore similar moves if the T-Mobile plan works well (IIRC, Verizon has plans for something with Amazon Kuiper). Wouldn't be surprised to see AST SpaceMobile as a target of M&A if they have something that works.

AST is already partnered with AT&T

AST SpaceMobile is already partnering with telecoms to use existing spectrum. Seems like they have EU, Japan and Africa agreements.

Yes if the SpaceX service succeeds it's kind of a death knell for the likes of AST SpaceMobile and Iridium.

The market seems to be big enough for multiple providers. AST will definitely be providing services to Rakuten in Japan and thus many more clients through their Symphony offerings

AST seems to be heading into a cost of capital war with Elon Musk - not a great position to be in. They have been telling investors for years that direct to cell was some secret sauce of theirs and that appears to be BS.

Most telcos like to have two or more vendors and almost all large terrestrial networks are built with equipment from at least two vendors.

If space based cellular service is viable with good adoption. History says operators will want at least two providers because having only one vendor is risky.

This assumes that other vendors can be cost competitive, which, at least to me, seems quite unlikely.

Right, this is like trying to compete in building cell towers against the only company that knows how to build tall things at all.

Cell carriers aren’t going to learn to build rockets, and no one can launch at SpaceX costs (and in the US, no one else can launch period)

I wish others aren't US based for that reason.

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