Credit: SpaceX
SpaceX wants access to at least 80,000 cell sites across the US, and it’s in talks with at least one major tower company to get there, including Crown Castle, according to a report (via Bloomberg). Citing people familiar with the matter, the outlet said the deals would firm up SpaceX’s path toward becoming a fourth nationwide wireless carrier alongside AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, with leases that could be worth billions of dollars.
The 80,000 figure works out to about half of the 158,500 purpose-built cell towers that were operating in the US last year, according to the Wireless Infrastructure Association. Crown Castle runs about 40,000 US towers, American Tower has about 42,000 US sites and privately held Vertical Bridge owns around 18,000.
Crown Castle hasn’t confirmed anything. Asked on the company’s earnings call on Wednesday about possible leases with SpaceX and Amazon, its chief executive said Crown Castle is talking with “all parties” but declined to discuss specific customers. SpaceX has not commented on the report, and it did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters, which noted that AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile shares fell between 4.2% and 5% in extended trading after the news.
Towers would be the ground half of a network SpaceX has been assembling all month. On October 8, it agreed to buy a nationwide portfolio of up to 14 MHz of paired 800 MHz low-band spectrum, a deal expected to close in the first half of 2027 pending regulatory approval. A day earlier, the FCC approved 15,000 next-generation direct-to-cell satellites for Starlink Mobile, the service that lets regular phones connect straight to SpaceX’s constellation.
During SpaceX’s third quarter earnings call on Tuesday, the company said S-band spectrum should carry most Starlink Mobile traffic, while the 800 MHz airwaves are meant to get signal inside buildings for people who aren’t on Wi-Fi. It also said it plans Starlink towers that use the real estate from existing Starlink installations. Elon Musk added that he sees “a clear path to several hundred billion dollars a year in connectivity revenue,” which we covered here.
On Wednesday, regulators signed off on SpaceX buying three unused AWS-3 licenses from Tristar, adding 15 MHz of uplink spectrum to its direct-to-cell network. Building out a nationwide ground network is still expensive, though, as TD Cowen has estimated it would cost more than US$80 billion and take many years.
Would you switch your phone plan to Starlink Mobile if it showed up as a full fourth carrier?
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