Latest / AST SpaceMobile Podcast / Anpanman - SpaceMob Momentum: FirstNet, Verizon's Pivot, and the New Glenn Launch

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Anpanman - SpaceMob Momentum: FirstNet, Verizon's Pivot, and the New Glenn Launch · AST SpaceMobile Podcast

• 0:06
  This is the AST Space Mobile podcast.
• 0:10
  Where we just basically turn your phone be seamless
• 0:14
  regardless of where you are. We don't want the user even to
• 0:16
  know that it's connected by satellite.
• 0:21
  Listen, the opportunity that we have is very, very, very large.
• 0:26
  Everyone sorry about that. I am a spectrum Internet
• 0:30
  customer and either spectrum is messed up or X is messed up or
• 0:36
  probably both. Anyway, I'm going to restart the
• 0:39
  space. What I did is I tethered my my
• 0:43
  desktop to my phone. Kind of silly that the phone is
• 0:48
  the phone provides better service than cable Internet.
• 0:51
  But here we are anyway, so I'll start over again.
• 0:55
  So I wanted to summarize some of the recent news around ASD Space
• 1:00
  Mobile and what to look forward to.
• 1:03
  Maybe first I'll start with Firstnet.
• 1:05
  And so today we found out that Firstnet launched the ASD Space
• 1:10
  Mobile section of the website. And here what's really cool is
• 1:15
  that obviously, you know, the companies have been testing
• 1:17
  together for quite some time. We saw AT&T provide a video post
• 1:23
  of local, state and federal officials utilizing the service.
• 1:27
  And and of course, you know, beta testing is probably
• 1:31
  underway as as we speak. And I can talk a little more
• 1:34
  about that shortly. But but yeah, this website is
• 1:37
  great in that it describes a service that will be available
• 1:40
  later this year. It will be a smaller initial
• 1:44
  rolled out to, you know, more recent devices, but then it will
• 1:48
  be rolled out more broadly. And so there's probably going to
• 1:51
  be a few stages of this, but, you know, for the US in terms of
• 1:56
  safety and sovereignty, Firstnet is obviously critical to that.
• 2:00
  And for those that don't know, Firstnet is the first responder
• 2:02
  network. It was created after 911 when a
• 2:06
  bunch of, you know, firefighters and police who were there first,
• 2:11
  first in response to the terrorist attacks because the
• 2:14
  cellular network was totally inundated with people trying to
• 2:17
  call out basically no one had service, right.
• 2:20
  And so it was difficult to coordinate with first
• 2:22
  responders. And of course, you know, the
• 2:25
  tragically the towers collapse and many perished.
• 2:28
  But coming out of that first that was created from the
• 2:32
  federal government, there was a allocation of of spectrum in the
• 2:35
  700 megahertz band. It was put up for a tender to
• 2:38
  create a this new separate network from existing commercial
• 2:42
  networks and AT&T when that with a several billion dollar
• 2:46
  commitment for investment and to manage that network over time.
• 2:49
  And so that's where first Firstnet came about.
• 2:53
  And so if you can imagine during a natural disaster or you know,
• 2:57
  if it's something beyond that that happens to the US, this
• 3:01
  network is supposed to be the backbone for, you know, first
• 3:06
  first responders who are police, medical, firefighters, military.
• 3:11
  And so that's where, you know, that's where Firstnet is a plays
• 3:15
  a really important role in the United States.
• 3:17
  And So what if you imagine what that network means and the
• 3:21
  deployment where AT&T has had to build out a ton of towers to
• 3:25
  light up the spectrum. There's still a lot of parts of
• 3:28
  the US where first responders need to be, which are dead spots
• 3:32
  where it's not economical to to roll out towers.
• 3:37
  And so by leveraging ASD Space Mobile's satellite service to
• 3:40
  light up that spectrum and 700 megahertz span, you actually are
• 3:46
  able to accomplish the Holy Grail, right, which is providing
• 3:50
  broadband connectivity no matter where you are in the US in any
• 3:54
  situation. And this also includes, for
• 3:57
  example, in Florida when you had a hurricane take out, you know,
• 4:00
  terrestrial cell towers, AST with its precise beam forming
• 4:05
  and satellites could actually light up spectrum that's gone
• 4:08
  down, whether it's 708 hundred megahertz.
• 4:12
  And so first responders and victims can actually communicate
• 4:15
  during those periods of time where test towers are down,
• 4:18
  power lines are down, what have you, right.
• 4:21
  And so that's why this service is absolutely critical.
• 4:25
  I think we are probably close to, you know, finding out what
• 4:30
  the commercial, a definitive commercial agreement will be
• 4:33
  between Firstnet and ASD Space Mobile.
• 4:37
  You know, I'd expect that to be probably worth a few $100
• 4:40
  million over the, over the course of several years, you
• 4:45
  know, whether that's, there's probably like some minimal
• 4:49
  guaranteed amount and then you, you've got per user pricing as
• 4:52
  well. But yeah, we'll, we'll find out
• 4:54
  about that relatively soon. And there was a space Bob member
• 4:58
  who reached out to me and said that their brother-in-law is AI
• 5:03
  think a first responder and they have Firstnet service.
• 5:06
  They have a phone that works on Firstnet and this person was
• 5:09
  actually out in a an area where there is no cellular coverage
• 5:13
  and they received a phone call. And now I haven't, I haven't got
• 5:17
  any additional color as to how the voice quality was or what
• 5:21
  what actually transpired. But when they got the call, they
• 5:23
  were surprised to see that the phone worked.
• 5:25
  And then when they looked at it, it specifically showed that
• 5:29
  there were satellite coverage. And so that's obviously not
• 5:32
  because it was an AT&T First net phone.
• 5:34
  It's not any other service. You know, I guess perhaps if it
• 5:38
  was an iPhone, it could have been, it could have had some
• 5:40
  global star texting for connectivity, but not a voice
• 5:43
  call, right? And so I'm waiting to hear back
• 5:47
  additional color on how that call went and maybe if there
• 5:51
  could be screenshots or maybe this person could go back.
• 5:54
  But I would say if you are a first that user and you're
• 5:59
  listening to this right now, I would encourage you to, you
• 6:03
  know, there's a handful of applications that Space Mop has
• 6:06
  developed to track Bluebird satellites.
• 6:09
  But I would encourage you to get one of those and go head out to
• 6:12
  a, an area where there's definitely no cell coverage.
• 6:15
  And, and you know, at the time that a Bluebird is going to, you
• 6:19
  know, crossover overhead and see if you actually get service.
• 6:21
  Because what this could tell us is that beta testing is already
• 6:25
  is already turned on and maybe this person might have gotten
• 6:30
  service, you know, during a time when maybe they weren't supposed
• 6:35
  to, but it was being tested by others, which is probably
• 6:39
  likely. But either way, if you do have
• 6:43
  person that please do us all favor, do yourself a favor, go
• 6:47
  out and give it a try and, and report back 'cause I think that
• 6:50
  would be really cool. Moving on, I did want to talk
• 6:54
  about Starlink direct to sell performance.
• 6:57
  And so there was a an engineer at 1 of Starlink's customers
• 7:01
  which was I think it's Virgin Media's O2, which is a a UKMNO
• 7:07
  that recently start signed a commercial agreement with
• 7:10
  Starlink. And this person actually
• 7:14
  disclosed what real world performance for Starlink direct
• 7:17
  to sell is. And so if you guys will recall,
• 7:20
  when Alan and Mike Sievert of T-Mobile announced this service
• 7:26
  back in 2022 in competition with AST, they had claimed that the
• 7:32
  the data rates were going to be anywhere between 7 megabits per
• 7:35
  second. And then I think some of their
• 7:36
  engineers on Twitter said that they could get up to 15 megabits
• 7:40
  per second. And so however, this engineer at
• 7:43
  O2 for real world, real world usage said right now they see 4
• 7:48
  megabits per second. And so that's, that's not to a
• 7:52
  single user unless you know there only is 1 user in the
• 7:54
  area. But the beam, the diameter of
• 7:57
  the the service which was disclosed in this discussion is
• 8:02
  around 50 kilometers in diameter, right?
• 8:04
  And so that's about the size of Luxembourg.
• 8:06
  And so each one of these Starlink V2 mini satellites can
• 8:11
  put down 40 beams, 40 cell beams of 50 kilometers in diameter.
• 8:15
  And each one of those is a is 4 megabits per second, right?
• 8:19
  And so if you think about the total throughput of the
• 8:22
  satellite, that's pretty low, right?
• 8:25
  And so maybe this kind of goes back to what we've always, you
• 8:29
  know, discuss, which is building a purpose built satellite from,
• 8:35
  you know, first principles ground up to do exactly this
• 8:38
  versus you're taking existing architecture and grafting on,
• 8:44
  you know, swarm IoT and seeing if that can work right.
• 8:47
  And so here you truly have a minimally viable product, right?
• 8:51
  And so if you can imagine 50 users and the size of a, the
• 8:55
  size of a Luxembourg, if they were to all use that data
• 8:58
  simultaneously, that would be 80 kilobytes per second each,
• 9:01
  right? And so for those old heads out
• 9:04
  there, if they, if you recall back in the days of like a 9600
• 9:09
  BOD modem, that's, that's the equivalent speed of, call it 8 *
• 9:14
  9600 BOD modem, which is pretty slow, right?
• 9:17
  But then in the preponderance of no service, that's good, right?
• 9:23
  Because then you can text and you can send messages and do
• 9:26
  some simple things. And, and if everyone's, you
• 9:28
  know, like cable, if everyone's not using it the same time, then
• 9:31
  your speed goes up, right? And so if there's only two users
• 9:37
  out of 50 using it, then they'll each have two megabits per
• 9:41
  second, right? And as you know, for people who
• 9:45
  architect cellular systems, the expectation is that at any point
• 9:50
  in time, not everybody is on the phone utilizing heavy data at
• 9:54
  the same time. Like there's, there's some
• 9:56
  algorithms in, in math that goes behind it, but it's going to be
• 9:58
  some small fraction of that, right.
• 10:01
  And so that said, you know, if, if everyone's camping and they
• 10:05
  all want service, they're all, I don't know, they're all trying
• 10:09
  to do some type of, you know, chat, chatting, which you
• 10:13
  probably shouldn't do if you're on the out, of course, because I
• 10:16
  think you should be enjoying the outdoors.
• 10:18
  But you know, maybe if you're skiing together and, and you
• 10:21
  need to communicate, then yeah, go ahead, use your phone.
• 10:24
  But but yeah, I think obviously 4 megahits per second is very
• 10:29
  low. Just to give people some
• 10:31
  calibration of, of how that compares.
• 10:33
  So Blue Walker 3, which is AST Space Mobile's first Test
• 10:37
  satellite, which is still orbiting the Earth right now,
• 10:40
  that that satellite achieved 20 megabits per second, right?
• 10:43
  And, and that was on 5 megahertz of spectrum.
• 10:46
  Similar to what you know, low band spectrum, by the way,
• 10:50
  similar to what Starlink is using, which is 5 megahertz of
• 10:53
  mid band spectrum. And you know for ASD space
• 10:57
  mobile, whether it's Blue Walker 3 or block one or block 2,
• 11:01
  you're looking at a 24 kilometer diameter beam.
• 11:04
  So a smaller beam, but then a lot more throughput within that
• 11:07
  beam. And so if you have, you know, if
• 11:11
  you have a number of users in that beam, they should
• 11:13
  experience better performance than for Starlink, right?
• 11:17
  And so 20 megabits per second for test satellite.
• 11:19
  And then eventually, as AST disclosed earlier this week,
• 11:24
  they expect to significantly exceed 120 megabits per second,
• 11:28
  right? And so that's, that's orders of
• 11:30
  magnitude much faster than than what Starlink has today.
• 11:35
  And additionally, Starlink at Mobile Congress, they talked
• 11:39
  about the idea of trying to get their version 2 satellite, which
• 11:44
  is going to be much bigger and it's going to need Starship to
• 11:47
  get to 150 megabits per second. I'm not sure I, I can't verify
• 11:52
  this, but I did see, you know someone, it, it appears that
• 11:56
  they work at Starlink. They had tweeted that they could
• 11:59
  get to 150 megabits by using MIMO, utilizing 2 satellites,
• 12:04
  and that's how you get to 150. And so that, that actually was a
• 12:09
  new disclosure to me. And that actually, I don't know
• 12:14
  that, that that's pretty bad, right?
• 12:16
  Like AST is expecting to get to 120 megabits per second, you
• 12:21
  know, for one satellite, right? But whereas Starlink is saying
• 12:25
  we can get to 150 if we utilize 2 satellites, you know,
• 12:29
  utilizing MIMO. And so, so yeah, I mean, I, I
• 12:33
  think going back to this whole idea of, you know, who's the
• 12:37
  competition, it's not really Starling because the, the
• 12:39
  technology is not really comparable.
• 12:42
  And even for V2, it's not going to be comparable, right.
• 12:46
  And so for AST 120 megahertz per second for a beam from the
• 12:53
  current Block 2 satellite that's being launched, that doesn't
• 12:57
  take into account MIMO, it doesn't take into account, you
• 12:59
  know, coheres technology. It doesn't take into account
• 13:01
  carrier aggregation. You know, you're probably
• 13:03
  looking at multiples of that, which I, you know, I discussed
• 13:06
  this in, in the the latest quarterly update.
• 13:12
  You know, Bell said we can based off of our technology, we think
• 13:16
  we can three to 10 X that. And so, yeah, you know, if
• 13:22
  you've been working on this technology for the better part
• 13:25
  of, you know, what is it 7-8, nine years versus your
• 13:29
  competitor who got into it recently and and really didn't
• 13:33
  start at the bottom in terms of ground principle, you know,
• 13:37
  first principles to design it. And then they're also doing a
• 13:41
  ton of other stuff. But you're solely focused on
• 13:43
  this. You'd expect to have, you know,
• 13:46
  technological advantage, right? And you're going to press that
• 13:50
  advantage. Like the company has 3800 patent
• 13:53
  patent penny claims they're not sitting on their hands.
• 13:56
  They're, they're very, they've got a road map for the next
• 13:58
  several generations. And so to compete with that is
• 14:02
  going to be tough, right? And I think, I think it was SES,
• 14:06
  they said at Mobile Congress, someone asked, you know, hey,
• 14:09
  why don't you guys give me the direct to the device And they
• 14:11
  physically said, hey, if we, if we want to do that, it's going
• 14:14
  to cost us 6 to $8 billion to get to something that's
• 14:18
  comparable and that's get to where the current players are.
• 14:23
  It's not like going beyond that. So, so yeah, it's to me seeing
• 14:30
  Starlink performance data, you know, where you don't have, you
• 14:35
  know, some of the the Starlink stands putting it making out
• 14:39
  these these different claims, but you actually have a customer
• 14:42
  saying this is what it is, it's for texting.
• 14:45
  And you know, hopefully we'll get better in the future with
• 14:47
  the next generation of satellites.
• 14:50
  But but yeah, that's, that's what it is.
• 14:52
  And so it's not really a competitor.
• 14:53
  Starlink Direct to sell today is a competitor to Sky Low and
• 14:58
  Global Star, right? We're talking about messaging.
• 15:02
  It's not broadband, it's not video, it's not voice, not any
• 15:04
  of those things. So definitely keep that in mind,
• 15:08
  right? Because I think obviously some
• 15:09
  people are are itching that hey, we're not getting our satellites
• 15:12
  up. And yeah, this stuff is hard.
• 15:14
  It takes time, right? And so for those that are
• 15:19
  wondering about Bluebird 7, I'll talk a bit more about it
• 15:23
  shortly. But you know that Blue Origin,
• 15:26
  New Glen launch is absolutely critical for Blue Origin.
• 15:29
  And so they need to get that right.
• 15:30
  And this is their first time reusing a booster, you know,
• 15:34
  refurbishing it and putting it back out there for launch.
• 15:37
  And so, so it's taking time for them to make sure that they're
• 15:40
  getting it together. But I think we might have some
• 15:42
  good news next week moving on. So I, I do want to talk about
• 15:46
  Japan. This news came out earlier today
• 15:49
  that the Japanese Prime Minister is going to in the meeting with
• 15:53
  Trump, is going to ask to be to join Golden Dome.
• 15:57
  And this makes all the sense in the world.
• 16:00
  I mean, it would be kind of silly for the US to build this
• 16:04
  infrastructure that circles the globe and just use it for the
• 16:07
  US. It should be a a service that is
• 16:12
  leveraged with allies, right? Because as allies contribute
• 16:15
  intelligence and technologies to that, that that fabric, it's
• 16:20
  just going to make it better, right?
• 16:21
  And beyond, I mean, and that's not even to get account like the
• 16:25
  fact that you can amortize the cost of Golden Dome.
• 16:27
  So for example, I know people have kind of you know, they've
• 16:32
  they've when you look at the amount of expenditures that are
• 16:35
  that are likely going to come for Golden Dome, it's going to
• 16:38
  strain the US, you know, US budget, right?
• 16:40
  But then if you've got Japan and other allied nations kicking in
• 16:46
  several billion dollars a year of budget, then the price comes
• 16:49
  becomes very reasonable, right? And so someone had asked in a
• 16:54
  tweet earlier, they said, well, what about the the proliferation
• 16:59
  of drones? Like doesn't that render golden
• 17:01
  Dome useless? Like the fact that you've got
• 17:03
  missile based interceptors and like, why would you use that?
• 17:08
  Would shouldn't you use lasers? And since these, you know,
• 17:11
  there's going to be swarms of drones doesn't even matter
• 17:16
  actually, drone warfare amps up the need for golden Dome.
• 17:19
  I would argue in that, yeah, you're you're moving beyond just
• 17:22
  ICBMS and let's importantly like Golden Dome is to protect the US
• 17:29
  continent, right? And so it's not as if drones are
• 17:31
  going to fly cross Atlantic. I mean, maybe they will one day,
• 17:35
  but you're typically looking at hypersonic missiles, ICBMS,
• 17:39
  intercontinental ballistic missiles.
• 17:41
  And and then of course, you've got drones right in, in the
• 17:45
  contested war, you know, contested area of fighting,
• 17:48
  then, you know, now there's this preponderance of drones.
• 17:51
  But I think Golden Dome actually heightens the need for, for, you
• 17:58
  know, in, in the world of proliferating drone warfare.
• 18:02
  I think it actually heightens the needs for what what is
• 18:04
  Golden Dome going to provide, right?
• 18:06
  It's going to provide PNT position navigation, you know,
• 18:10
  timing, which is, you know, GPS, which we all know gets at this
• 18:15
  point is very it's very vulnerable.
• 18:18
  And so by having golden Dome leveraging, you know, a handful
• 18:22
  of commercial constellations, you're going to have a
• 18:26
  resiliency right and redundancy. And so, yeah, you may not use
• 18:31
  missile bases interceptors against drones in the future,
• 18:34
  but you're going to need to, if you have anti drones, you have
• 18:37
  these little drones that go take out other drones, they're going
• 18:40
  to need positioning information, they're going to need
• 18:43
  communications, right? And so you're going to need
• 18:46
  whether it's optical cables, but also cellular networks.
• 18:49
  I mean, each one of these drones are probably going to carry a
• 18:53
  multitude of communication ways to communicate in order to get
• 18:57
  through to your adversary, right or take down drones are being
• 19:02
  sent at you. And so Golden Dome, I would
• 19:05
  argue, becomes even more valuable in that situation.
• 19:09
  And then you've got radar sensing too, where Golden Dome,
• 19:12
  you know, you're, you're going to be able to detect launches.
• 19:15
  I I'm not sure. I mean, I'm not an expert.
• 19:17
  I'm not sure if, if the, the level of granularity will be
• 19:21
  able to track drones. But the fact that golden Dome,
• 19:26
  you know, utilizing satellites and spectrum being able to
• 19:30
  actually track stealth aircraft, I would assume and and with the
• 19:35
  level of fidelity that you can get from, for example, a
• 19:38
  Bluebird satellite, I would assume that you'd be able to
• 19:40
  track flying drones too, which I think catsy, I got to go back
• 19:46
  and look at a post, but they're they're he had posted about how
• 19:50
  you could track pretty small objects with with the satellite.
• 19:53
  And I think also Pranya did did as well.
• 19:57
  And so all the stuff actually becomes more important.
• 19:59
  And then on top of that, you know, one of the ace up the
• 20:03
  sleeves, which which Professor Todd Humphreys talked about at
• 20:07
  UT Austin, the fact that you're going to have a.
• 20:12
  Very powerful electronic warfare platform, right, which can do a
• 20:16
  multitude of things, whether that's disrupting communications
• 20:21
  or taking down networks. And those are the networks that
• 20:24
  actually communicate with drones, right?
• 20:27
  And so all the stuff I'd argue Golden Dome becomes, you know,
• 20:32
  what we've seen in Iran unfold this far.
• 20:35
  I think Golden Dome is even more critical, right?
• 20:39
  Because imagine, I mean, you're, you're seeing a little bit of it
• 20:43
  with Spacex's star shield, where star shield was leveraged to do
• 20:48
  some of the precision, you know, work over Iran.
• 20:52
  Golden Dome is going to take that to an entirely another
• 20:55
  level, right? And so I would argue its
• 20:58
  importance goes higher. And on top of that, as more
• 21:02
  allies get invited into the fold, you know, trusted
• 21:05
  partners, that network is going to become even more critical and
• 21:09
  more effective, right? And so, so I think the news that
• 21:13
  Japan is joining, I know, I know this administration discussed
• 21:16
  potentially bringing Canada into the whole, which again, makes a
• 21:19
  ton of sense given the geography.
• 21:22
  But I think including other allies would, you know, makes
• 21:27
  absolute sense, right? And I don't know ultimately if
• 21:30
  like if Europe will join that or if they'll create their own.
• 21:33
  But even if they create their own, like somebody is going to
• 21:36
  have to provide that service. They're going to have to build
• 21:38
  the satellites. They're going to, you know, if
• 21:40
  they want a parallel at the same level capabilities, then they'll
• 21:45
  have to talk to companies like ASD Space Mobile to do that.
• 21:48
  So, so yeah, that that's some big news, I think.
• 21:54
  Yeah, I mean, the market is fixated on the conflict on Iran
• 21:58
  and we're we're looking at headlines day-to-day.
• 22:00
  But just take a step back and think about like what's
• 22:02
  unfolding there and what becomes more important here, like in
• 22:05
  your portfolio. And I'd argue ASD space mobile,
• 22:09
  with each passing day of this conflict, the defense side of
• 22:12
  the business becomes more and more valuable.
• 22:16
  Let's see another thing that happened this week.
• 22:19
  Verizon formally withdrew their opposition at the FCC to AST
• 22:23
  Space Mobile's commercial application.
• 22:26
  And so for those that don't know all the history, I think it was
• 22:29
  like back in 2020-2021 when AST, you know, I think when, when a
• 22:36
  bell had started talking about the service, but in 2017 and oh
• 22:40
  gosh, maybe it was 2019 or maybe it was 2020.
• 22:43
  So when he had filed the application for commercial
• 22:47
  service initially. And obviously it was that was a
• 22:49
  long time ago and things things are quite different now.
• 22:52
  But you know, 2-2 of the, the largest players, T-Mobile and
• 22:58
  Verizon filed opposition. You know, they're like this.
• 23:01
  They didn't want, obviously they felt competitively threatened
• 23:04
  and they didn't want the service.
• 23:05
  They complained that, you know, it's probably going to create
• 23:10
  interference and these, these large satellites, there's like
• 23:14
  debris risk, you know, Kessler stuff, all, you know, whatever
• 23:17
  they could throw against the, the wall, they, they threw the
• 23:19
  spaghetti against the wall, see what would stick.
• 23:21
  And they also were like, you know, this service, it's not
• 23:24
  going to work and whatever, right?
• 23:26
  They, they just wanted to put an end to this.
• 23:28
  And of course, AT&T decided to work with AST space mobile.
• 23:31
  And you know, Fast forward to 2022, T-Mobile was like, hey,
• 23:37
  actually everything we said before we take that back, it
• 23:40
  actually this, this makes a lot of sense.
• 23:42
  It could work. And we're going to work with
• 23:43
  Starlink. And they announced their
• 23:45
  partnership in 2022. And then of course, in 2024,
• 23:49
  Verizon, after watching developments unfold for both
• 23:53
  Starlink and AC Space Mobile, having talked to both companies,
• 23:57
  diligence that, you know, the nearest business people got
• 24:02
  together with AST Space Mobile. They got together with Starlink
• 24:05
  and looked at everything that was going on.
• 24:07
  They said, hey, you know what, we're going to work with AST
• 24:09
  Space Mobile, which was one of the biggest, you know, points of
• 24:13
  validation, right, for the company.
• 24:15
  And this is what we rated stock from 5 to 39, right, where
• 24:19
  you've got the world's most profitable, you know, wireless
• 24:24
  market and to the largest players in the world in terms of
• 24:29
  profitability, Verizon, ADT, they decide to pick AC space
• 24:32
  mobile. And that was a huge sea change.
• 24:34
  And so, so Fast forward to today, you know, Verizon, as a
• 24:39
  result of that initial partnership, they, they threw
• 24:43
  their regulatory support behind AST.
• 24:45
  They've been very active in, in the docket.
• 24:47
  They contributed the most valuable thing that an MNO has
• 24:51
  beyond cash or any of that stuff, It's which is their
• 24:53
  spectrum. They contributed their 850
• 24:55
  megahertz spectrum to be used in partnership with AT&T.
• 25:00
  You know, they, they, they, they put aside their competitive, you
• 25:05
  know, opposition to AT&T and they said, hey, let's partner
• 25:08
  together and let's help this little company out of Midland,
• 25:10
  TX, make this a reality. They also invested $100 million,
• 25:13
  right? They bought, they bought 30.
• 25:16
  They invested $35 million in the convert back then, which seems
• 25:20
  like ages ago in January 2024. No, sorry, they bought that in
• 25:26
  June of 2024. And then we're joining AT&T,
• 25:30
  Google and Vodafone. And then they also provided $65
• 25:34
  million of commercial prepayments, right?
• 25:37
  And so Fast forward to today, they this past week, they
• 25:43
  withdrew their formal opposition, right?
• 25:45
  And so why did they keep that there?
• 25:46
  It's, you know, they, they might have kept that there just in
• 25:51
  case, you know, so for example, AT&T is the senior partner and
• 25:57
  Verizon's kind of like the junior partner in this
• 25:59
  adventure. And so AT&T is this quarterback.
• 26:02
  They're they're running the process.
• 26:03
  And so if you're Verizon, you know, they're, they're a key
• 26:05
  competitor, right? And so you probably kept that
• 26:09
  formal opposition in the docket just in case and wanted, you
• 26:13
  know, wanted to make sure that everything, everything we talked
• 26:16
  about, you are actually. So now we're at the point where,
• 26:20
  you know, for those that don't know the, the company, the
• 26:25
  company did put forward a revised US commercial, you know,
• 26:29
  application, US application for commercial access.
• 26:32
  I think it was like back in September, it was finally
• 26:35
  accepted by the FCC and then there was a comment period which
• 26:39
  ended in October, I think the end of October.
• 26:42
  And so we're kind of in the sweet spot for when the FCC is
• 26:46
  likely to decide whether to grant or grant with
• 26:50
  modifications or or deny the application for U.S. market
• 26:55
  access, right. And so, you know, with this new
• 27:00
  FCC chair, Chairman Carr, he obviously has been focused on
• 27:05
  removing bureaucracy and expediting the process for FCC
• 27:10
  approvals. And so we're pretty much there
• 27:13
  like it's it's time. It's time to approve that
• 27:15
  application and to have Verizon withdraw the formal position, I
• 27:19
  think is a bit of a tell. Like we're probably pretty damn
• 27:22
  close. There was some back and forth
• 27:25
  recently, I think in January or February with the parties and
• 27:29
  the FCC and then you had a meeting with attorneys from AT&T
• 27:35
  and Verizon. You know, there were no
• 27:36
  principles involved. The FCC also ASD Space mobile
• 27:40
  and RRKF engineering. And so when you, when you have
• 27:44
  those final meetings where it's basically to like cross TS and
• 27:47
  dot IS that means like you're pretty close, right?
• 27:50
  Because I've discussed in spaces before, you wouldn't have the CE
• 27:54
  OS of Verizon, AT&T show up for that.
• 27:56
  Because if you did, that probably means like you've got a
• 27:58
  problem, right, Where principles have to be involved.
• 28:01
  Whereas here the attorneys are kind of cleaning stuff up.
• 28:03
  And so I think we're pretty close.
• 28:06
  We could be getting FCC approval anytime now.
• 28:08
  And based off of, you know, I, I put out a poll just for fun, but
• 28:13
  the stock price market, the market reaction for stock price
• 28:16
  would be, I put some like pretty wild numbers out there.
• 28:19
  And, and of course there are a number.
• 28:21
  Well, there are a lot of replies saying it's priced in or the
• 28:24
  stock is going to be flat or down.
• 28:26
  I, I think, you know, some of those people are, are doing it
• 28:28
  for humor, but I don't need a market really understands what
• 28:33
  FCC approval means. Because then once that's once
• 28:36
  you receive approval and you have the ability to put
• 28:40
  satellites up without needing, you know, special temporary
• 28:44
  authorizations or any of that stuff, that's really valuable,
• 28:47
  right? I mean, you could even someone
• 28:50
  could even buy SD space mobile just to get access to that,
• 28:53
  right? Or you have companies that
• 28:56
  perhaps they were, they were approved to put up a consolation
• 28:59
  and they failed in it. And then that that approval is
• 29:02
  actually quite valuable. Like people, another company
• 29:05
  could go buy that and within the the framework and the parameters
• 29:08
  of that, that application, they could try to do the same.
• 29:12
  And we're going to get some modifications to it.
• 29:14
  But that is a huge milestone, right?
• 29:17
  And I think once that news drops, you know, you should see
• 29:21
  a pretty significant re rating of the stock because that that
• 29:24
  pretty much says like the FCC, after reviewing data that you
• 29:28
  put forward and your plans, they are giving you unfettered
• 29:33
  commercial access, right? And so there's no more waiting
• 29:37
  and providing test data. Do the doing this out or the
• 29:40
  other. It's it's all systems go and and
• 29:43
  that is a just like getting, you know, Verizon coming in as a
• 29:47
  partner and investing. That is a huge point of
• 29:50
  validation, right? So the FCC is viewed as, you
• 29:54
  know, the global leader in terms of cutting edge, like
• 29:57
  regulatory, you know, frameworks.
• 30:00
  And so for ASD to get that, you would then expect, you know, the
• 30:05
  dominoes to fall for other developed markets and and
• 30:09
  underdeveloped markets, right? And so that's, that's a huge, I
• 30:13
  think, I think whether, you know, everyday investors,
• 30:17
  institutions, bears, and by the way, bears, the the consulting
• 30:23
  experts and all these guys years ago were like, that's never
• 30:26
  going to happen. There's no way they're going to
• 30:27
  get commercial access. Maybe the day that it gets
• 30:30
  approval, we'll dig up some of those, those, those gems.
• 30:33
  But but yeah, that's, I mean, once that happens, that's that's
• 30:38
  going to be a game changing event, which I don't think the
• 30:42
  market fully understands, right. And so if you, if you do have
• 30:48
  dry powder, maybe save some for that specific day when it does
• 30:51
  happen, because it's going to be glorious.
• 30:54
  Let's see. So the last thing I want to talk
• 30:58
  about is next week. And so I kind of hinted at this
• 31:00
  and, and people are like, what do you mean?
• 31:02
  What is what do you mean next week?
• 31:04
  And so, you know, we've been waiting for a launch date to get
• 31:08
  set. And as Tanner has pointed out
• 31:12
  quite correctly, that before a launch can happen, you actually
• 31:15
  need a static fire test. And so as everyone knows, we're
• 31:19
  reusing the the new Glen 2 booster.
• 31:22
  Never tell me the odds. And this is a marquee event for
• 31:26
  Blue Origin in that this this is going to be the first time that
• 31:29
  they've reused a booster. And you know, that Booster has
• 31:33
  been going through the process of getting refurbished and
• 31:36
  being, you know, dressed to launch another vehicle, right?
• 31:41
  And so this is the Holy Grail of of launch where you can reuse
• 31:47
  things and bring the cost down as a result.
• 31:49
  And so from, you know, various like sleuthing that space mob is
• 31:54
  done. It sounds like the static fire
• 31:57
  is going to happen sometime next week.
• 31:59
  And so with that, I would assume with that static fire, you know,
• 32:04
  that would be the precursor to actually launching Blue Origin
• 32:08
  New Glenn 3. And so, you know, based off of
• 32:12
  various sources, it seems like it's likely that Blue New, new
• 32:17
  Blue Origin, New Glenn 3 is going to launch sometime between
• 32:21
  March 29th to March 30th, perhaps 31st.
• 32:25
  And it's important that it happens at that time because
• 32:29
  obviously NASA just disclosed that Artemis 2 is targeted to
• 32:32
  launch for April 1st. And so I'd expect next week that
• 32:37
  we will see that never tell me the odds booster get rolled out
• 32:42
  to the platform to go through static fire testing and that
• 32:47
  could happen probably on Monday. And then after that we will
• 32:52
  probably get a confirmation of launch date sometime, you know
• 32:56
  once that static fire happens. And so we are rolling out the
• 33:00
  booster sometime Monday or Tuesday, maybe the static fire
• 33:03
  happens Wednesday or Thursday, maybe even Friday and a launch
• 33:07
  date being confirmed upon successful stack firing.
• 33:11
  And so next week, yeah, it could be quite interesting.
• 33:16
  I think as as Cook mentioned, obviously there's, there's macro
• 33:19
  stuff going on. But you know, we've now passed
• 33:23
  the IDES in March and now we're signing up for what I think is
• 33:27
  going to be a restart of the endless rally for AST, right?
• 33:31
  Because you've got you've got the launch coming up that well,
• 33:35
  the the date being set and launch coming up by the end of
• 33:38
  March. You've got a batch delivery in
• 33:40
  April and of course all the lunches thereafter.
• 33:43
  You've got a potential FCC approval of our application any
• 33:47
  day now. You've got what seems to be, you
• 33:50
  know, Firstnet rolling out this website there.
• 33:53
  There could be an announcement anytime now and a whole host of
• 33:57
  other things. And I think the other
• 33:58
  interesting thing, which I can't go into detail, but there, there
• 34:02
  are also legacy satellite providers out there that are
• 34:05
  apparently testing with AST space, mobile and commercial
• 34:08
  agreements. Could be, could, could come
• 34:11
  together, right. And so, you know, that's
• 34:15
  something to look forward to as well potentially.
• 34:17
  So, yeah, a lot of exciting things.
• 34:19
  I know obviously the markets you, you continue to see a
• 34:23
  pullback and risk and, and I think, you know, everyone's kind
• 34:26
  of trying to figure out if there's going to be an off ramp
• 34:29
  for this conflict. But I, I truly do believe if we
• 34:32
  were not, if Iran was not happening, you know, the stock
• 34:36
  price would be probably in the one 20s one 30s levels.
• 34:38
  But we're, we're here at 87, which is not bad either,
• 34:42
  considering everything, you know, the uncertainty that's
• 34:45
  around and how negatively position the market is, right?
• 34:49
  But you just need a small piece of good news, right?
• 34:53
  And, and all hell can break loose to the upside, right?
• 34:56
  And so we've got a number of things in the hopper that could
• 35:00
  pop off and they're going to happen, right?
• 35:02
  It's inevitable like, and again, going back to people who are
• 35:08
  worried about timing, if you're going to, if you're going to
• 35:13
  deploy a dominant unparalleled service, a broadband cellular
• 35:19
  connectivity and the, the other guys who are competing with you
• 35:23
  are not even even close, not even in the same ballpark,
• 35:26
  right? And, and they're hoping to get
• 35:27
  to where you are a generation from now, maybe 2 generations
• 35:32
  from now, and that's like 3 or 4, five years out.
• 35:34
  I mean, global star, you know, they're, they're, they don't
• 35:38
  have a lot of spectrum and they're leveraging MDA space to
• 35:42
  build their consolation and who knows how many changes and
• 35:45
  updates that has to go through. And, and this is, you know, MDA
• 35:48
  space, they're, they're very seasoned, right?
• 35:50
  But then they're building a new platform.
• 35:52
  And so they're, that's going to take time and there's going to
• 35:55
  be growing pains there. And then for Starlink, they're
• 35:57
  waiting for V2 and based off of some speculation like 150
• 36:02
  megabits per second is actually dependent on MIMO for two
• 36:05
  satellites, then they're still not even there, right?
• 36:08
  And so you, it's up to you to roll out a service that is
• 36:13
  superior. That's going to be, you know, on
• 36:16
  deployment, it's going to be right the first time every time.
• 36:20
  And you have that luxury, you have that luxury to do it right
• 36:24
  and do it well because you have the technological edge, right?
• 36:27
  You have the you have the overwhelming advantage.
• 36:31
  You've got patents. And so that's remote.
• 36:35
  And and you don't want to, I think for for the company.
• 36:39
  And by the way, like we just raised another billion dollars.
• 36:42
  You know, we've got close to $4 billion in cash.
• 36:44
  We're going to do it right and we're going to get it right.
• 36:48
  And we're not going to make mistakes.
• 36:49
  And so I think that's a key thing for people to understand.
• 36:53
  And so I'll leave it with that. So, yeah, thanks everyone for
• 36:58
  joining. Hope this was helpful.
• 37:00
  The market suck. They're going to do what they're
• 37:02
  going to do. But as I said, there's like
• 37:05
  we've got this whole hopper full of catalysts.
• 37:07
  It's like a bunch of bottle rockets, right?
• 37:09
  And they're all, they're all that you've got this lighter and
• 37:12
  you're about to light any number of them and they could all pop
• 37:14
  off maybe one, maybe 2, maybe all of them at the same time.
• 37:17
  And so just be patient because it's going to happen.
• 37:20
  It's inevitable. Thanks everyone for joining.
• 37:23
  Thanks for listening to the AST Space Mobile podcast.
• 37:27
  If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the
• 37:29
  podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social
• 37:33
  media, or leave a rating and review.
• 37:35
  To catch all the latest news about AST Space Mobile, make
• 37:39
  sure to subscribe. Thanks again and I'll see you
• 37:42
  next time. We're doing something very, very
• 37:47
  big an activity technology. We can really affect billion
• 37:51
  lives. AFT Space Global is the only
• 37:53
  company that has proven technology to deliver several of
• 37:57
  broadband connectivity directly from space.
• 38:00
  In. Everyday smartphone people will
• 38:03
  just basically turn their phone and be seamless, regardless of
• 38:06
  where you are. We don't want the user even to
• 38:09
  know that it's connected by satellite.
• 38:11
  Our role is to bring this into reality, always in partnership
• 38:15
  with the MMO. Listen, Waffles.