SpaceX may need $120-130 billion more to rival T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon

what happened

Telecommunications analyst William Webb told Benzinga, in an interview published Oct. 30, that SpaceX could need an additional $120 billion to $130 billion beyond the roughly $28 billion in wireless spectrum deals it has already struck to build a mobile network capable of competing with T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon. Webb estimated about $90 billion of that would go toward acquiring enough spectrum to match the incumbents' holdings, with another $30 billion to $40 billion for network infrastructure, including roughly $20 billion to equip 60,000 to 80,000 cell sites and about $10 billion for the core network, per Yahoo Finance's republication of the Benzinga interview. "The real cost is the spectrum," Webb said. T-Mobile shares rose 7% and SpaceX fell 4% the same day, with Verizon up 3% and AT&T up 2%, a move 24/7 Wall St. attributed to the fresh cost estimate.

why it matters

Webb's estimate gives competing carriers and investors a concrete figure for how far SpaceX's Starlink Mobile buildout still has to go beyond its spectrum deals before it could challenge the big three as a standalone nationwide carrier rather than a wholesale direct-to-device partner. The scale of the gap, several times what SpaceX has spent on spectrum so far, is also a data point for why the company has said it plans to keep leaning on carrier partnerships like T-Mobile's T-Satellite through 2027 before activating service on its own spectrum in 2028.

signal-to-noise

quick facts

Companies

SpaceX

Category

financial

Impact

notable

SNR

4 / 5

Event date

2026-10-30

Published

2026-11-01 13:59 UTC