Telecom industry trade group WIA released a report downplaying the potential competitive threat from satellite-based connectivity platforms, a finding that comes as concerns continue to rise over potential direct-to-device (D2D) market inroads from well-funded satellite-based entities like SpaceX.

WIA’s findings were based on a pair of reports commissioned by the industry group that “provide a practical, physics, and economics-based assessment of satellite D2D’s capabilities and limitations.” Report insights were provided by Mobile Experts and TMF Associates.

WIA’s take on the reports was that they identified four “key factors that limit satellite D2D's ability to serve as a substitute for terrestrial networks.”

Those four include signal strength in that the distance a satellite signal must travel to reach a mobile device results in a weaker connection and greater chance for interference; capacity of a satellite beam to provide sufficient performance when covering a large geographical footprint; limited need for satellite connectivity due to pervasive terrestrial-based network coverage; and the financial model for satellite-based communication services.

“The physics and economics of wireless networks tell a consistent story that satellites are not a replacement for wireless infrastructure on the ground,” Mobile Experts president Joe Madden noted in a statement. “Satellite D2D can help extend coverage in remote areas, but terrestrial networks will continue to provide the speed, capacity, reliability, and coverage that consumers and businesses expect.”

TMF Associates President Tim Farrar concurred, adding that: “The momentum behind satellite innovation has sparked an important conversation about the future of wireless connectivity and the role satellites can realistically play alongside terrestrial networks. Satellite D2D can help expand coverage in remote and hard-to-reach areas, but it cannot replicate the speed, capacity, indoor coverage, and reliability provided by terrestrial networks. The strongest wireless future will leverage both technologies for the purposes they serve best.”

Space-based competition

The reports come as the traditional telecom space has been hounded about satellite-based competition.

SpaceX’s management during the company’s latest earnings call laid out various reasons why it can be a player in the domestic market’s nearly trillion-dollar mobile telecom space. COO Gwynne Shotwell noted that the company ended its latest quarter with approximately 10,200 total Starlink satellites in orbit, with roughly 9,600 of those supporting its broadband service, and thus the rest in support of its burgeoning mobile offering.

The broadband offering is the fixed service that provides internet connectivity beamed to object-mounted satellite receivers, while the mobile offering is currently being offered as a text-messaging based satellite service through already established mobile operators.

Shotwell explained that Starlink’s current mobile service uses about five-megahertz of spectrum bandwidth, “and we operate that through local telco providers.” The company is also sitting on approximately 65 megahertz of additional spectrum through its deals with EchoStar, “which give massive increase in capability.”

Shotwell did note that the company needs to launch its mobile V2 satellites to tap into that additional capacity, a push the executive initially said it expects to do “later this year,” though Shotwell later added that “we're going to start flying the next-generation Starlink mobile satellite, it's confusing, it's actually the second version, as opposed to the v3, which is the broadband next-generation broadband satellite, we're going to start flying those next year.”

Musk later noted that the terrestrial reach of the EchoStar spectrum will support Starlink building out “terrestrial components.”

“You will have not only the capacity from the satellites themselves, but you will have a buildout of the terrestrial, basically the hardware and systems necessary to make a true mobile service exactly what you want it to be,” Musk said.

Space numbers

Shotwell hinted at what a Starlink Mobile operation could expect in terms of revenues, noting that the current U.S. nationwide operators – AT&T, T-Mobile US, and Verizon – generate $600 billion per year in revenues.

“And I anticipate us to be able to acquire quite a few of their customers because I think our service will be better,” Shotwell proclaimed. “We will eliminate dead zones, leveraging … basically the satellites in orbit. It'll be better during any sort of natural disaster because, surprisingly, even though space movies make space look super dangerous, it’s a pretty quiescent environment, and so I'm quite excited about Starlink Mobile going forward.”

However, the cost of gaining those questions remain questions. One analyst did ask about the potential for a terrestrial network to cost “well over $100 billion” to construct, a notion that Shotwell downplayed.

“I'm not going to talk about the capex for that. It's a little, well, I don't want to say it's immature, I'm just going to say I'm not going to talk about the capex for that right now,” Shotwell said, though she did tease how that deployment capex might be used.

“Let me give a little hint, and that is you could put a base station, a cellular base station, on the … gear that holds a Starlink broadband dish, so you can have kind of these little femtocells around the country, and you deploy that as you need it,” Shotwell said. “You don't have to necessarily spend, you know, 10 or many billions of dollars in low-band spectrum all up front before you deploy your system, so that's why I don't want to talk about the capex for building out the terrestrial because we have a lot of really kind of great and new ideas for how we're going to do that, and I think it will be quite capex efficient.”

Musk furthered this notion, stating the firm feels “reasonably confident that we can deploy a large number of sort of small stations, essentially, that they're really just Starlink dishes that also provide connectivity in the mobile spectrum bands and have them be all over the place.”

Musk added that these already deployed Starlink broadband antennas “are located on the roofs of houses and businesses, so … they've got a sort of a clear view to for providing connectivity directly to the cell phones on the ground, and in fact providing connectivity that is, we think, probably better and higher bandwidth than what is currently available from cellular providers.”

Mobile telecom executives have been adamant in dismissing the technical or market impact from a strictly satellite-based competitor, and have in turn partnered on their own spectrum aggregation venture targeted at supporting satellite-based communication operators in partnering with already deployed terrestrial networks.