Tim Farrar, president of TMF Associates, said at Silicon Valley Space Week in Mountain View, California, on Tuesday that wireless carriers have concluded relatively few people will pay for direct-to-device service (satellite-to-phone connectivity for standard phones), calling it not a service differentiator. The remark came during a Tuesday market brief on the conference’s Satellite Innovation track. The same day, the Federal Communications Commission approved Amazon’s $11.57 billion purchase of Globalstar, a transaction announced in April and built largely around satellite-to-phone service.
On SpaceX‘s third-quarter earnings call, President Gwynne Shotwell reported 22 million monthly users on Starlink Mobile, but Farrar noted that figure counts anyone who uses the service at least once a month. He said fewer than 10% of people with access to Starlink Mobile use it in a given month, and T-Mobile has provided statistics suggesting about two megabytes of daily use. Farrar used the Starlink Mobile number as evidence that direct-to-device adoption is weak.
Farrar argued that counting once-a-month use is not impressive for a service with a couple of hundred million people having access. Such low engagement undercuts the case for a paid mass-market product, he said. Without public revenue data from SpaceX, Farrar argued it is difficult to judge how much money direct-to-device satellite service can actually generate.
Farrar pointed out that SpaceX has stopped disclosing revenue numbers for Starlink Mobile, which he said does not inspire confidence in the size of the direct-to-device opportunity. T-Mobile informed investors that, a year after launch, essentially nobody is purchasing satellite service on its own, Farrar said. He cautioned that T-Mobile’s claims deserve a slight pinch of salt given the carrier’s fight with Starlink.
Apple launched Emergency SOS via satellite with Globalstar in 2022, yet Farrar said the company has sold pretty much no extra phones because of the feature. He recalled a 2009 TerreStar Networks survey in which 20% to 40% of respondents said they would pay for a phone that works anywhere depending on price, but TerreStar ended up with about 2,000 users after launching its service before filing for bankruptcy in 2010. Farrar pointed to Apple’s free safety feature as evidence that even a prominent satellite capability does not drive phone purchases.
Farrar described the physics of direct-to-device as an everyday phone in a pocket trying to communicate with a satellite hundreds of miles up rather than a tower a mile down the road. He noted people typically use the service in places like national parks where they want rescue capability without paying every month. He described this physics gap as part of why the service underperforms.
Carriers are considering bundling satellite access into monthly plans, which raises the question of what they will pay providers, Farrar said. He outlined a pricing spread: Apple’s service is free to iPhone users and cheap to provide across hundreds of millions of phones a year; cheaper systems could work if carriers pay only a few tens of cents per connection; but Starlink and AST SpaceMobile want a dollar or more a month. Farrar argued the pricing gap could block paid direct-to-device unless consumer willingness to pay rises.
If consumers will not pay more, carriers cannot absorb that much extra cost, Farrar argued. The gap between what carriers are willing to pay and what satellite providers want could block paid direct-to-device unless consumer willingness to pay rises. He added that if carriers bundle satellite rather than sell it standalone, the economics shift to wholesale payments between carriers and satellite operators.
Carriers call satellite a supplement to ground networks, Utility Search Marketplace said, frequently bundling it into premium plans or offering emergency texting at no extra charge. It is still unclear, Utility Search Marketplace noted, whether enhanced satellite data will be sold as a paid add-on.
On May 14, 2026, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile announced an agreement in principle to form a joint venture pooling their limited satellite spectrum into a single shared direct-to-device platform, though the deal is not final and depends on definitive agreements and regulatory clearance. The three carriers, which rarely cooperate, are treating direct-to-device as shared plumbing rather than a competitive differentiator, partly in response to SpaceX’s growing satellite and spectrum position.
The three carriers together control about 98% of U.S. postpaid wireless subscribers and spend billions competing for them. Their rare cooperation suggests that direct-to-device has stopped being a battleground for customers.
The FCC approved SpaceX’s roughly $17 billion purchase of EchoStar spectrum in May 2026, Utility Search Marketplace said, 65 MHz of mid-band that gives SpaceX a legal basis to operate a nationwide wireless service under the Starlink Mobile brand instead of only through T-Mobile. SpaceX’s acquisition of both satellites and spectrum prompted the incumbent carriers to set direct-to-device terms together instead of letting SpaceX define them.
SpaceX also agreed to acquire Grain Management’s entire nationwide 800 MHz spectrum portfolio, up to 14 megahertz of paired low-band spectrum, subject to FCC approval. The company said the 800 MHz frequencies fill a key remaining technical gap as Starlink Mobile works to become a major U.S. mobile carrier, according to Stocktwits. SpaceX is assembling low-band and mid-band spectrum to complete a hybrid satellite-terrestrial network for Starlink Mobile, intensifying competition with incumbent carriers.
T-Mobile CEO Srini Gopalan met with FCC Chair Brendan Carr to argue against satellite companies using the 2.5 GHz band, and the carrier’s filing urged the agency to remove 2.5 GHz from bands considered for direct-to-device. T-Mobile is leading carrier opposition to opening prime 5G spectrum for direct-to-device satellite, arguing interference risks make the band unsuitable.
T-Mobile sent representatives to meet with advisors for each of the three FCC commissioners on Oct. 19 to oppose satellite use in 2.5 GHz, and the next day AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and CTIA representatives met with those same advisors to repeat the argument, Broadband Breakfast reported. CTIA CEO Ajit Pai then met with Carr and the other two commissioners in a coordinated multi-day campaign. T-Mobile began a coordinated lobbying effort against satellite access to 2.5 GHz ahead of the FCC vote on whether to seek comment on the proposal.
The wireless industry contends that 2.5 GHz and the 3.45 GHz band primarily used by AT&T should not be considered for direct-to-device because it would be almost impossible to prevent interference, with a satellite signal potentially bleeding up to 35 miles from its intended target. Carrier engineering filings argue that time-division duplex bands cannot be synchronized with satellite signals due to inherent delay, threatening terrestrial network performance.
T-Mobile engineering and tech policy head Thomas Dombrowsky wrote in a filing that time-division duplex bands result in “an inherent delay which renders synchronization with terrestrial signals extremely complex.” The carriers argue that satellite signals cannot be synchronized with terrestrial networks due to inherent delay.
CTIA and the carriers also said the FCC should not let satellite companies meet build-out requirements for the 1675-1695 MHz band auction without deploying terrestrial gear. The FCC scheduled those items for a vote at its meeting on Thursday, Oct. 29. The carriers want the FCC to hold satellite operators to the same terrestrial deployment standards as terrestrial providers in upcoming spectrum decisions.
Farrar advised smaller players to stay out of the Starlink fight and instead pursue satellite connectivity built into cellular IoT chipsets, PNT (positioning, navigation and timing), safety services, search and rescue, and RF monitoring. He presented these recommendations during the same Tuesday market brief at Silicon Valley Space Week where he expressed skepticism about paid direct-to-device. For companies without carrier scale, Farrar recommended niche markets where direct-to-device can succeed without competing directly with SpaceX or the large mobile operators.
On Wednesday at Silicon Valley Space Week, Aashu Virmani of Cambridge Consultants moderated a panel titled Orchestrating the D2D Network of Networks with Iridium CTO Greg Pelton, Skylo co-founder and Chief Business Officer Tarun Gupta, Joby Aviation Vice President Greg Ewert, and Jason Trembley of Terrestar Solutions and the Mobile Satellite Services Association. The industry-facing panel on direct-to-device network orchestration followed Farrar’s market brief, showing the broader conference debate over how satellite and cellular networks should interoperate.
Farrar also wrote on X that attention now turns to Viasat, which holds the final block of global spectrum still available, Stocktwits reported. Roger Entner, founder of Recon Analytics, said on X that “Ligado is next.” After SpaceX’s 800 MHz deal, spectrum attention shifts to Viasat, reflecting the broader scramble for airwaves usable by direct-to-device services.
SpaceX’s push to build its own cell sites has drawn opposition from Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. Farrar said of Elon Musk, “He’s always spoiling for a fight, and this fight is going to run and run.” The conflict over direct-to-device has moved from spectrum and satellites into terrestrial cell-site construction, pitting SpaceX against the established carriers.
Meanwhile, SpaceX’s direct-to-device constellation has received FCC approval for up to 15,000 satellites, with the company promising more than 100 times the bandwidth of its current generation.
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