TechPulse USA

Four Rival Telcos Sign Pact to Dethrone Starlink By Daniel Rao, New York — with reporting by the TechPulse USA newsroom Four of Europe's fiercest telecom rivals just shook hands on the one thing they have never agreed on: how to survive Elon Musk. On Monday, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica and Vodafone signed a letter of intent to explore a joint bid for Europe's mobile satellite spectrum — the opening move in building a homegrown alternative to Starlink. If the phrase "European telecom cooperation" sounds like a contradiction, that is exactly why this matters. The four giants, which compete tooth and nail from Berlin to Madrid to Paris, are proposing to pool their bids for the 2GHz satellite airwaves the European Commission will reallocate next year. Their pitch, carried in an identical joint statement on Monday, is to build a European-run direct-to-device (D2D) satellite service — phone-to-satellite connectivity with no dish, no dongle, just your ordinary h...

Update, Oct. 20: Europe's telcos just answered — with a pact The European answer to Puzder's threat did not come from Brussels — it came from the boardrooms. On Monday, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica and Vodafone signed a letter of intent to pursue Europe's 2GHz direct-to-device spectrum jointly, as wholesale partners, without building their own constellation (joint statement via Telefónica and Orange newsrooms, 19 Oct; reported by Light Reading and Mobile World Live). It is the first organised European counter-move in the dispute this post describes: sovereignty by commercial coalition rather than by regulation. Note the caution from our sister coverage: the carriers' letter never names Starlink as a target — the "rival to Starlink" reading is the press's, not the letter's language. The sequel arrived within 24 hours: four European telcos signed a pact to build a homegrown satellite-to-phone alternative and bid for the very 2GHz band Brussels ...

Elon Musk just bought the radio spectrum that T-Mobile was forced to give up — and Wall Street immediately priced SpaceX as America's fourth mobile carrier. Shares of AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile sank as much as 8% in after-hours trading on Thursday, while tower operators surged and Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile's German parent, fell 7% on Friday in its worst trading day in more than three years. For a company that sells rockets and satellite internet, SpaceX is suddenly the telecom industry's nightmare. The deal, announced Thursday by private-equity firm Grain Management, gives SpaceX 100% of Grain's nationwide 800 MHz spectrum portfolio — up to 14 MHz of paired low-band airwaves. It still needs approval from the Federal Communications Commission, and neither company disclosed a price. But the shape of Musk's plan is no longer ambiguous: SpaceX wants Starlink Mobile to work as a full terrestrial-and-satellite phone network, indoors and out, on the phones people al...