Qualcomm to supply 5G radio equipment for SpaceX’s Starlink Mobile network

Qualcomm has reached a multi-year agreement to provide SpaceX with radio equipment, baseband units and software for a planned nationwide terrestrial 5G network called Starlink Mobile in the United States, and Qualcomm Chief Executive Officer Cristiano Amon discussed the agreement on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Wednesday.

Starlink Mobile radios use Massive MIMO architecture, a system with many antennas that serves multiple users at once, and include 64 transmit and 64 receive paths. The base stations will use Qualcomm’s Dragonwing QRU100 and QDU100 platforms together with commercial-grade Layer 1 software, the low-level code that controls how radio hardware handles signals. The platforms aim to boost energy efficiency for radio and distributed-unit processing.

Deployment of the Starlink Mobile ground network begins in 2027 at tens of thousands of macro cell sites, and the multi-year agreement means the nationwide buildout will take time. The equipment uses a flexible, multi-band network architecture with advanced beamforming meant to steer wireless signals toward users and make the most of licensed spectrum, and can deploy in stages. SpaceX has spent more than a year preparing for the ground network, and in September 2025 agreed to buy EchoStar‘s AWS-4 and H-block spectrum for about US$17 billion.

Qualcomm has described the agreement as its largest 5G deal to date, and the companies have not disclosed financial terms. Amon described the SpaceX agreement as the start of a strategic relationship with tremendous potential, and Qualcomm expects Starlink-related revenue to show up as it leaves fiscal 2027, with the opportunity becoming clearer in fiscal 2028. On Wednesday, Qualcomm shares rose more than 5 percent to their strongest session in more than a month, while SPCX stock dropped nearly 4 percent.

SpaceX wants to blend Starlink satellite links with its own ground-based 5G network, so phones can move between satellites and towers without dropped calls. Starlink senior vice president Michael Nicolls said people should not have to put up with dropped calls at home or while traveling. SpaceX aims to go beyond satellite-based mobile service and take on AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, and ServeTheHome reports Starlink Mobile may end up as a fourth major US carrier alongside its satellite constellation. Qualcomm will compete with Marvell, Broadcom and Intel in the telecom infrastructure market.

In Canada, Starlink phone service currently works through carrier partners such as Rogers Satellite rather than a SpaceX-owned ground network, and SpaceX has not said it will build that network there. Qualcomm’s Dragonwing infrastructure portfolio has seen use in places such as Asia but has not been widely adopted in the United States, so the deal matters for that lineup.

Amon said the agreement also involves planning for future wireless generations, with Open RAN and AI native trends named as areas for innovation. Qualcomm sees the deal as a new revenue stream at a time when Apple is shifting its iPhones to in-house cellular modems such as the C2.

David Manners, a components editor at Electronics Weekly, said the Starlink and Qualcomm news is exciting given the scale of the MMIOs Qualcomm is powering. “Exciting to see what is happening with Starlink and the scale of the MMIOs that Qualcomm is powering,” Manners said.