Back in August, SpaceX made it clear that it wants to compete with AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon in the US. Of course, a proper carrier needs more than satellites. Today, Qualcomm announced that SpaceX has picked its Dragonwing Cellular Infrastructure platforms for Starlink Mobile’s nationwide terrestrial 5G network.
The base stations will be built on the Dragonwing QRU100 and QDU100 platforms, along with Qualcomm’s commercial-grade Layer 1 software. Starlink Mobile will use Massive MIMO radio units with 64 transmit and 64 receive paths (64T64R), which are designed to improve coverage, capacity, and spectral efficiency. The QRU100 handles the processing for those radio units, while the QDU100 takes care of latency-sensitive Layer 1 processing, and together they’re meant to improve performance per watt.
SpaceX plans to start the nationwide rollout in 2027, with tens of thousands of sites deployed over the course of the multi-year agreement. The network will be multi-band and built out in several waves. While this deal is all about 5G for now, the two companies call it a commercial step toward their broader vision for “AI-native 6G infrastructure”.
Michael Nicolls, Starlink’s Senior Vice President, says phone calls shouldn’t still be dropping in this day and age, whether you’re at home or on the go, and that Starlink is building “the first fully-integrated nationwide satellite and terrestrial network”. He adds that working with Qualcomm will speed up SpaceX’s timeline for developing its end-to-end base station architecture.
Last month, SpaceX bought 800MHz spectrum for indoor coverage, while T-Mobile’s CEO ruled out letting SpaceX run on its network. Just yesterday, a report claimed that SpaceX may even buy Boost Mobile from EchoStar to speed up its plans to turn into a full-fledged carrier.
