AT&T explains AST SpaceMobile strategy
December 5, 2024
AT&T is a US telco giant with 241 million subscribers. It wants to serve those subscriber when the user is in a ‘not spot’ and will use AST SpaceMobile to cover most of the US (Alaska might be a challenge) with AST’s satellite coverage.
AT&T CEO John Stankey explained his forward-looking strategy and how AST would evolve from its current five orbital satellites over the next few years and until 2029 when the satellite constellation would be more or less complete.
Stankey said: “You’ll see us plug their services in the edges we don’t cover, over the ocean, in the Grand Canyon, or in places it doesn’t pay for us to put up a cell tower to cover that footprint.”
AST is currently building two of its ‘BlueBird’ Block 2 satellites every month and is boosting that output and it has been suggested that by the end of 2025 they could have around 90 satellites in orbit. AT&T said they would need 95 AST craft in orbit in order to supply “a near-continuous” service.
One analyst asked Stankey: “Why not get a consortium together, spend a few billions and build a LEO constellation [yourself]?” and Stankey replied: “AST SpaceMobile has already done it.”
Some of AT&T’s comments were:
· “Our strategy with satellite is that it will augment terrestrial services when it comes to telephony”
· “We’ve been involved in satellites with AST since the very beginning with the first one in orbit”
· “We understand the capacity each of these birds is limited to, the amount that we can task up for broadband applications can serve up a number of customers”
· “We’ve chosen the path for it to be complimentary to the products and service that we offer to our biz and consumer customers”
· “Rather than having satellite dedicated spectrum, lifting up spectrum that’s already embedded in the handsets (direct-to-device) is important in order to make that strategy effective, you need a fleet of satellites that are engineered to have that kind of RF gain, the antenna array of those satellites need to be strong and large enough to ensure the level of service of those handsets is equal as best as possible from what the consumer expects from a cell site on the ground”
· “That’s why we’ve partnered and invested in AST to get their technology lifted up into orbit”
However, while praise is due for AT&T’s enthusiasm, there was no mention of SpaceX’s Starlink which is already supplying Text and SMS services to some markets.
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