Starlink goes up a gear: 17 billion to erase white areas

SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company, has just signed an agreement with Echostar aimed at acquiring licenses of radio and satellite frequency bands. This action is part of the development of the Direct to Cell project, which aspires to connect smartphones to the Internet in all areas, even those not covered by the 4G/5G mobile network.

Starlink wants to connect smartphones to the satellite internet

$ 17 billion. This is the astronomical amount spent by Starlink to acquire the frequencies 50 MHz, between the AWS-4 and H-Block bands. The American entrepreneur was able to seize the opportunity when she presented herself, Echostar was previously under pressure from the American regulator, the latter believing that the company did not use certain frequencies enough.

Of these 17 billion spent, 8.5 billion were paid in cash and 8.5 billion in SpaceX action.

SpaceX had even publicly asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to act on this subject. To extinguish the controversy that put, Echostar had started a plan to sell his licenses. The operator AT&T had acquired last August for 23 billion dollars in frequency bands.

Cover white areas in America

With the acquisition of these licenses, SpaceX traces the path to the integration of 5G in the next Direct to Cell to Starlink offer. Indeed, these frequencies will allow the firm to deploy a new generation of satellites, a hundred times more powerful than the models currently in service.

At this stage, the Direct to Cell offer is already approved by the FCC and the Musk company has already signed a partnership with the operator T-Mobile. This new service would be able to offer satellite internet access on all smartphones, even in white areas.

The frequency range acquired by Starlink, sometimes called the 2 GHz S-Band band, is a portion of spectrum attributed to the United States. On the old continent, this band is not used in the same way. Unlike its counterpart across the Atlantic, the European regulator did not harmonize it for 4G/5G networks.

In other words, the offer prepared by Starlink would first aim to Americans and would not be deployed in Europe for the moment, at least, not thanks to the acquisition of these Echostar bands.