Latest / AST SpaceMobile Podcast / Anpanman - SpaceX / Echostar Spectrum Deal - Implications for MNOs

Transcript

Anpanman - SpaceX / Echostar Spectrum Deal - Implications for MNOs · 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.
• 0:29
  Everyone another, another day to discuss news overnight.
• 0:36
  Also just wanted to well, I wanted to fire up the space
• 0:40
  because there was some comments from Elon Musk overnight in
• 0:44
  regards to his Spectrum purchase.
• 0:47
  But I also wanted to share some initial thoughts in regards to
• 0:51
  that and then also answer any questions people have.
• 0:55
  So feel free to ask questions or comments.
• 0:58
  I didn't really compare anything, but just wanted to
• 1:03
  provide some initial reactions to this interview that Elon had
• 1:08
  with the all in podcast crew. And so for those that missed it,
• 1:12
  I, I posted it as a tweet so you can go back through my profile
• 1:16
  and see what he said specifically.
• 1:18
  But interestingly, you know, he was prompted by the hosts about
• 1:24
  to you know, to give his thoughts on the Echostar
• 1:27
  spectrum purchase. And you know, basically he
• 1:32
  affirmed that it's a long term strategy that he wants Starlink
• 1:37
  to have the ability to deliver high bandwidth connectivity from
• 1:40
  satellite to phone. As we all know from a tech
• 1:42
  perspective, you know their their efforts, I've had a number
• 1:46
  of issues, you know, operating on T-Mobile what I believe is 5
• 1:52
  by 5 megahertz of spectrum. But this purchase will allow
• 1:56
  them to have, you know more spectrum to carry that will
• 2:00
  carry higher capacity. However, as Alon you know said
• 2:06
  yesterday, this the spectrum won't be available for use for
• 2:10
  probably about two years and perhaps even longer.
• 2:14
  The reason why that is is that harbor manufacturers have to
• 2:19
  incorporate new chipsets that will have this spectrum working
• 2:24
  or incorporated into the chipset.
• 2:26
  So even if you do were to fully deploy the sports spectrum
• 2:30
  today, you actually need phones that support it, which probably
• 2:33
  aren't going to be on the market for another two years.
• 2:37
  And then on top of that, you'll need the SpaceX V3 satellites,
• 2:42
  which for at least currently the plan where I understand for
• 2:47
  SpaceX is that those satellites will eventually be available
• 2:51
  once Starship is working. And so that's another I guess
• 2:57
  bottleneck for service in that Starship has to get on a
• 3:01
  successful regular cadence. And then those V3 satellites
• 3:04
  which have a larger phased array, from my research, I think
• 3:08
  that phased array will be about 5 meters by 5 meters.
• 3:11
  And that can, you know, comparing that to AC space
• 3:14
  mobile, which is 15 meters by 15 meters, you're still has some
• 3:20
  disadvantages. But obviously you know, Starlink
• 3:22
  plans to have more of those satellites for coverage.
• 3:27
  But I think, you know, the, the Echostar spectrum does solve
• 3:31
  some of their interference issues because you know, it's a,
• 3:34
  it'll be much wider in bandwidth or or wider in megahertz.
• 3:38
  And, and so I don't think by operate moving from operating in
• 3:43
  a narrow, narrow bandwidth to a much wider bandwidth, I think
• 3:47
  they'll be able to solve some of those interference issues.
• 3:50
  And so eventually as we've always said, I think Starlink
• 3:53
  will develop a a robust and decent competing product, but
• 3:59
  it's going to take some time. I think the other thing that's
• 4:02
  important to note is that Starlink today and for the
• 4:05
  foreseeable future operates primarily just or only operates
• 4:10
  on mid band spectrum. Today that's 19100 megahertz.
• 4:12
  But once these new satellites are up and running, it'll expand
• 4:16
  into two gigahertz. And So what that means is that
• 4:21
  you know you'll have capacity and decent coverage when you're
• 4:25
  outside of a building or maybe it's a thin building, but and
• 4:31
  you know, you'll have decent data throughput.
• 4:33
  But for actual, you know, coverage and penetration through
• 4:37
  walls and buildings, ASD space mobile, the first constellation
• 4:41
  we focus on Logan Spectrum. And so that's going to be a key
• 4:44
  differentiator. As you know most of you guys
• 4:48
  know AST the initial satellites will focus on 600 to 900
• 4:51
  megahertz low band spectrum which is good for coverage and
• 4:54
  propagation. And then the second
• 4:57
  constellation will be focused on mid band spectrum which is well
• 5:00
  lower mid band spectrum which is 11.5 gigahertz up to Isabel
• 5:05
  recently has disclosed 2.6 gigahertz.
• 5:08
  And so that mid band shell which will leverage AST Space Mobile's
• 5:13
  legato spectrum that will be I think you'll start to see some
• 5:17
  of those satellites deployed at the end of 2026 and that service
• 5:22
  the mid-day and shell start really coming into play sometime
• 5:26
  in 2027. But I think you know, last night
• 5:32
  the comments from Milan were quite telling.
• 5:35
  You know, he and this was partially prompted by the host,
• 5:40
  but but you could tell, I mean, some of this stuff is scripted
• 5:44
  and, and it's obviously top of mind.
• 5:46
  I mean, I think it's one thing where SpaceX goes out and, and
• 5:52
  with their PR and says, Hey, we want all M and OS to we want to,
• 5:55
  you know, they underlined in their PR yesterday underlying
• 5:58
  partnership. Like we want to partner with M
• 6:00
  and OS. We're going to work with you to
• 6:02
  deliver this great service to your users.
• 6:05
  But then I think people in the tech community and people like
• 6:08
  us who are intimately familiar with SpaceX and their long term
• 6:14
  plans and also what this means for the industry, understand
• 6:19
  that this is a true competitive threat for M and OS, right.
• 6:21
  And so I think it's a consumer for me, I think it's great.
• 6:25
  You know, more competition is good for consumers generally.
• 6:30
  So, so, you know, I I'd welcome that, but but I think for the M
• 6:35
  and OS themselves were that's T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon and then
• 6:40
  M and OS globally, this is a pretty big competitive threat,
• 6:43
  right. So the vision that Elan, you
• 6:47
  know, was asked about and agreed to is that he wants to have
• 6:51
  Starlink as a global service without the need for a minnows.
• 6:54
  And you know, there's a few ways you can accomplish that.
• 6:58
  I think it's important to first of all, kind of frame this.
• 7:01
  So by just having direct to sell in mid band, you're not going to
• 7:06
  have the levels of performance that you get today with the
• 7:09
  terrestrial network. This is something that AT&T CEO
• 7:12
  John Stakey covered in the Goldman Sachs Communicopia
• 7:17
  conference yesterday where he talked about, you know,
• 7:20
  terrestrial network where you have an abundance of towers that
• 7:24
  are reusing spectrum and can serve many users.
• 7:28
  That dense network is going to always have the highest
• 7:31
  performance in terms of throughput and, and you know,
• 7:35
  low latency. And so if you can imagine beyond
• 7:38
  just, you know, the applications that we use today, which are
• 7:41
  video, e-mail, texting, things like that.
• 7:43
  When it comes to AI and other enabling type of technologies
• 7:48
  where you're going to need high level bandwidth and
• 7:50
  connectivity, whether it's drones, robots, connected cars.
• 7:54
  I think the terrestrial network, especially in dense urban areas
• 7:58
  like that's, that's always going to have a huge competitive
• 8:01
  advantage. But in areas where it may not be
• 8:05
  as economic to build up towers or, or that actually makes more
• 8:10
  economic sense to blanket something with satellite
• 8:13
  coverage, which by the way, is going to get better and better
• 8:16
  over time. That's where I think, you know,
• 8:21
  that's where AST space Mobile and, and Starlink come into
• 8:24
  play. The, the, the you know today is
• 8:30
  for, for these, for AST space Mobile and Starlink, you, you
• 8:33
  definitely need an MNO partner to not only deliver that service
• 8:40
  seamlessly to your customer, but then the economics of doing so.
• 8:44
  Whether you know, leveraging an, an existing stall based, you
• 8:50
  know, having the marketing and, and sales support for ASTC
• 8:54
  mobile, that's a very important and key asset, right?
• 8:57
  Which is why there's this revenue split model with AT&T
• 9:00
  and Verizon where unlike, you know, back in the day, I used
• 9:05
  Iridium, an example where Iridium had to build a
• 9:09
  vertically integrated company from the ground up and then they
• 9:13
  had to actually go out and get customers.
• 9:15
  They had to go spend marketing, sign customers up.
• 9:18
  They had to develop their own handset, which obviously was a a
• 9:21
  big and could do to be a big problem for them.
• 9:24
  But for AC6 mobile working in partnership with the carriers
• 9:29
  that from an economic standpoint and from a go to market
• 9:33
  standpoint, it's just much more attractive and doing that in
• 9:36
  partnership versus competing with them.
• 9:40
  You know that that is pretty much the game changer and and
• 9:44
  how to deploy this, this business model.
• 9:46
  But for Starlink, you know, obviously they are working with
• 9:50
  T-Mobile today in partnership and you know, T-Mobile is
• 9:55
  actively marketing Starlink's service even though they do
• 9:59
  compete today against each other and fixed wireless.
• 10:03
  But I think the the shortsightedness for T-Mobile
• 10:06
  and the the big issue, which I guess you know, Elan kind of or,
• 10:11
  or prompted by his photos, like he basically admitted, is that
• 10:15
  eventually he wants to go create a service that is going to have
• 10:19
  its own direct customers that's going to provide, you know, high
• 10:24
  speed Internet at home, which was through their dish fates
• 10:27
  service that everyone's familiar with today.
• 10:31
  But then in the future, the direct to sell is going to be
• 10:35
  kind of a replacement or not, not a full replacement, but a
• 10:40
  reasonable replacement for the relationship that you have with
• 10:42
  your M&O, right. And so, so that's the big
• 10:45
  competitive threat. And I think you know, when when
• 10:50
  he was prompt, when he was asked about what the spectrum means.
• 10:54
  And you know, he's egged on like, hey, so does this mean
• 10:57
  that you'll be able to buy your SpaceX phone and, you know,
• 11:00
  could I just buy my wireless service from you?
• 11:04
  You know, he did mention and this is the line that you know,
• 11:08
  he's not going to quit M and OS on the business, but because
• 11:10
  they own a lot of spectrum. But then you know, one of the
• 11:15
  options you mentioned is for Starlink service to basically
• 11:21
  provide a comprehensive solution.
• 11:22
  So what that means is like they will provide the wireless
• 11:26
  Internet service for your home and then when you step outside,
• 11:29
  they will provide direct to cell service.
• 11:32
  That service is not going to be as robust as a terrestrial
• 11:35
  service. So my guess is that if Elon
• 11:38
  decides to really go down that path, he would probably need to
• 11:42
  do one of two things. One would be to and this, this
• 11:46
  is probably the most likely path is to develop a mobile virtual
• 11:51
  network operator relationship with T-Mobile and or perhaps a
• 11:56
  combination of of AT&T and Verizon If they if they decide
• 11:59
  to go down that path, the what? So why would an M&O and, and
• 12:05
  when when we talked about mobile virtual network operators, this
• 12:09
  is similar to like I meant mobile or Boost or someone
• 12:11
  basically like is a brand and marketing arm.
• 12:15
  But then they actually you utilize or an agreement, they
• 12:18
  utilize the network of somebody else.
• 12:21
  And the reason why there's like there could be real value here
• 12:25
  or there there should be real value here is that, you know,
• 12:27
  Starlink is a is a well known brand.
• 12:29
  Obviously, you know, Elan is a well known brand.
• 12:32
  Tesla is a well known brand. They could probably create some
• 12:35
  type of new mobile service. That is, it could be Tesla phone
• 12:39
  or it could be Starlink phone or some new entity XX phone, which
• 12:43
  yeah, I think there will be a whole swath of consumers who are
• 12:48
  very positive that and there is probably some people would never
• 12:51
  want to use it. But but I think if he were to
• 12:57
  get into a relationship with an M&O, then you could actually see
• 13:01
  the ability to offer kind of an across the board service where
• 13:06
  you have the Internet at home. It's also going to leverage a
• 13:09
  terrestrial network and then when you're out of coverage or
• 13:12
  even when you're in coverage by doing carrier aggregation,
• 13:16
  you'll have like pretty good, you know, high bandwidth access
• 13:21
  on your on your mobile phone. Now some might question like why
• 13:24
  would an M&O be OK with that? And that that's, that's a key
• 13:29
  strategic question. I think the near there are
• 13:32
  clearly and this is how T-Mobile thinks there are near term
• 13:35
  benefits, right? So if you were to resell or if
• 13:40
  you were to provide the facilities to Starlink MVNO
• 13:44
  service, you could you're going to get the economic benefits of
• 13:48
  obviously, you know, Starlink paying you to use your network.
• 13:53
  If you think Starlink is going to take market share, I mean,
• 13:56
  obviously they're going to take some share from your own
• 13:57
  customers, which is not good. But then you they're also
• 14:01
  Starling probably ends up taking some share from Verizon AAT and
• 14:05
  T overall, if you think your that your net loss of customers
• 14:10
  being replaced by Starlink's, you know, ability to go get
• 14:15
  Verizon at AT&T customers and then obviously they got some of
• 14:17
  your customers, but they're paying you a lower margin than
• 14:20
  you normally would have made, but they're paying you
• 14:21
  something. If you think net net that's
• 14:23
  going to be good, then you might find entering into that
• 14:27
  partnership, you know, attractive near term.
• 14:31
  The other thing is that, you know, there is a bit of
• 14:34
  prisoner's dilemma, right? So if AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile
• 14:39
  are all looking at each other and they're like, OK, these
• 14:41
  guys, this guy Starlink is going to come in and try to eat our
• 14:45
  lunch. We can either all decide not to
• 14:50
  work with him. Or if one person cracks and
• 14:52
  decides to work with him, then the other two are kind of
• 14:55
  screwed, right? And so, so that's I think is
• 14:59
  another competitive reason why someone might decide to go ahead
• 15:03
  and work with Starlink if if they decide to go down this
• 15:05
  path. On the flip side, though, and
• 15:08
  this is where, you know, a board really has to contemplate what
• 15:13
  it means long term. So you're you're you're gaining
• 15:16
  some near term economics and that would be a boost for I
• 15:20
  don't know how many over quarters, but then over the long
• 15:23
  run, what have you done? You've actually sold your, you
• 15:28
  know, a decent amount of the value of your business.
• 15:30
  You've given it away, right? And so if you can imagine like
• 15:33
  the negotiations for an MVNO agreement, your term where
• 15:38
  you're just getting off the ground, like it's going to, if
• 15:40
  I'm T-Mobile, I'm going to want the best economics and
• 15:44
  Starling's going to be like, OK, you know what, I'm just trying
• 15:46
  to get this thing off the ground.
• 15:47
  Sure, I'll pay you, I'll pay you $0.70 on the dollar, $0.80 on
• 15:50
  the dollar, whatever it is, right?
• 15:52
  And then that, that that's, that's a positive, right?
• 15:54
  Because you're getting, you're getting a decent amount of your
• 15:57
  economics back to their customers.
• 15:59
  You lose to Starlink and then you, you net game customers from
• 16:02
  other carriers. And so that looks like a, a
• 16:05
  great proposition. However, the long run if the
• 16:09
  Starlink service, you know, mobile service gains a lot of
• 16:12
  customers and becomes large like a materially large juggernaut,
• 16:18
  right. So let's say it becomes a
• 16:20
  credible 4th wireless, you know, competitor and maybe in the US,
• 16:26
  I'm just making stuff up. But like, let's say they get 50
• 16:29
  million subscribers. Then when that agreement comes
• 16:33
  up for renewal, if you're T-Mobile, you you lose leverage,
• 16:37
  right? Because then Starling can say,
• 16:39
  hey, if you don't, I want to pay you only $0.30, not $0.70.
• 16:45
  And then if T-Mobile is like, no, go screw yourself.
• 16:47
  Then starting will say, OK, well, I'm going to go to Verizon
• 16:50
  or I'm going to go to AT&T and I'm going to go ink this.
• 16:53
  You could deal with them. And so basically over time, what
• 16:57
  you've done is you, you've sold your business for pennies on the
• 16:59
  dollar and you become beholden to Starlink.
• 17:04
  And and that's, that's a real that, that is the fear of, I
• 17:07
  think all the carriers right now in that, you know, the, the key,
• 17:14
  the most important thing is like who owns the customer?
• 17:16
  Who has control of the customer? Like the relationship today that
• 17:19
  I have, for example, you know, with, with my mobile carrier,
• 17:23
  like I, I pay the bills for them.
• 17:25
  They're always sending me promotions.
• 17:26
  I'll upgrade my phones. They, they throw in like free
• 17:28
  Apple, you know, music and all this other stuff.
• 17:32
  But they have the, they control the relationship with me, the
• 17:35
  M&O, right? And so even though, excuse me,
• 17:41
  the M and OS, the three of them, they, they basically, you know,
• 17:44
  sometimes people will joke about owning the keys to space.
• 17:46
  Well, the M and OS own the keys to wireless mobile access,
• 17:50
  right? And so everything has to go to
• 17:52
  them. Apple to an extent, there's a
• 17:55
  bit of a bit of uneasy relationship with them when they
• 17:57
  try to push features or take value or try to own the
• 18:00
  customers. But at the end of the day, Apple
• 18:01
  needs the M and OS because they own the customer and they're
• 18:06
  powerful. Like back in the day when the
• 18:08
  iPhone was a majority of handset sales, maybe Apple had more
• 18:12
  leverage, but these days because of Android and you know,
• 18:15
  Samsung, you know, their market share has gone down.
• 18:18
  And so Apple's leverage over the M and OS is not as strong as it
• 18:22
  used to be. But if you can imagine a world
• 18:25
  where, and this is where the competitive issue really comes
• 18:28
  to 4 is that if Starlink owns the customer and they provide
• 18:35
  wireless home Internet, that's that's pretty damn good through
• 18:39
  their dish service, then that's that's like a competitive
• 18:42
  threat. First of all, for the M and OS,
• 18:44
  for their fixed wireless ambitions, for their fiber
• 18:47
  ambitions. And then for the cable
• 18:50
  companies, like that's, that's obviously pretty bad.
• 18:52
  You know, not in a dense environments where cable is
• 18:54
  always going to have an advantage, but in the suburbs
• 18:58
  and those markets, that becomes a problem.
• 19:00
  But then for again, going back to the T-Mobile example, if they
• 19:07
  decide to work with Starling to be an MVNO, they lose control
• 19:11
  the customer, right? And so when you lose control of
• 19:13
  a customer, then you're not the price setter, you're going to be
• 19:17
  the price taker. And so that's the Faustian
• 19:20
  bargain that I've talked about before where T-Mobile was like,
• 19:23
  hey, you know what, this is sexy.
• 19:25
  We're going to add satellite service and we're going to,
• 19:27
  we're going to call it T satellite and powered by
• 19:30
  Starlink. This is going to be wonderful.
• 19:31
  We're going to take, we're going to, we're going to get a boost
• 19:36
  in person. What have you done in the long
• 19:39
  term? Like you're basically spending
• 19:41
  marketing dollars promoting this competitor that is going to
• 19:45
  become increasingly competitive to your core business.
• 19:49
  It's just bizarre behavior. But I don't I I don't know what
• 19:54
  T-mobile's board, which also includes storage of telecom.
• 19:57
  I've no idea what they're thinking.
• 19:59
  Mike Siebert's the CEO there. And you know, clearly it's a
• 20:01
  very marking, buzzy promotional company.
• 20:05
  And so maybe they thought that trade off was decent, but they.
• 20:09
  Are probably surprised now, right that that Starling bought
• 20:13
  this spectrum they now they're there, I guess they're leverage
• 20:18
  of for example, by providing Starlink with the PCSG block
• 20:24
  spectrum to to offer service in the US.
• 20:27
  Like that leverage has gone down tremendously, right?
• 20:30
  And I think it's very telling, like in the Elon interview last
• 20:33
  night, when people posited like, oh, is this competitive with M
• 20:37
  and OS and are you going to become an M&O yourself?
• 20:39
  He basically was like, yeah, yeah, there was a obviously he
• 20:42
  was kind of put on the spot. And I don't think all of it it
• 20:46
  was, I mean, clearly it wasn't all scripted.
• 20:48
  But I think if you were to ask the same questions to a Bell or
• 20:55
  Scott Wisniewski, you know, their first, an immediate
• 20:59
  response would be, no, we are a wholesaler.
• 21:01
  We partner with M and OS, we go to market with them knows we're
• 21:05
  not looking to compete with them like we don't have a fixed
• 21:08
  wireless business that's that's competing with their fixed
• 21:12
  wireless business. And when it comes to, you know,
• 21:17
  supplemental coverage and also providing broadband connectivity
• 21:21
  over satellite, we that is a go to market strategy that is in
• 21:26
  5050 partnership with M and OS, right?
• 21:29
  Whereas in the long interview, he was like, Oh yeah, eventually
• 21:32
  I want to create a global, global wireless service that's
• 21:37
  going to, you know, compete with regional players and eventually,
• 21:43
  you know, the two the two option, you know, you said one
• 21:45
  of the options is to, or the one option I talked about, which is
• 21:49
  creating a mobile virtual network operator.
• 21:53
  That's one way to kind of pursue it.
• 21:54
  The other one, which then, you know, the the interviewers
• 21:57
  prompted him on was, you know, would you go, how about just go
• 22:00
  buy a wireless carrier, which he was like, yeah, maybe, maybe we
• 22:03
  could do that. And so I think it's quite
• 22:06
  telling that, you know, in the responses that it, it wasn't
• 22:12
  the, the friendly, you know, we want to, no, no, we're not
• 22:17
  looking to go compete directly with M and OS.
• 22:23
  We, you know, we're, we're partnering with them.
• 22:25
  That wasn't the response. The response was like, we, we
• 22:28
  want to create our own mobile network operator and eventually
• 22:33
  compete with them and go global, right?
• 22:37
  And so I think that's, it's at this point it's, I think it's an
• 22:41
  existential question for M and OS, right?
• 22:43
  So and I I think the market, by the way, in regards to AFC space
• 22:47
  mobile, you know, you, you've got this like knee jerk reaction
• 22:51
  of like, oh, Oh my gosh, it's, it's a lawn.
• 22:53
  It's it's SpaceX. You know how they can compete,
• 22:56
  but it's not as if the M and OS, the incumbents are tiny start up
• 23:01
  companies. These are like hundreds of
• 23:03
  billions in in enterprise value entities that own a tremendous
• 23:09
  amount of spectrum, not just mid band, but low band spectrum.
• 23:13
  They own towers. They're being this right.
• 23:16
  And while some of us loathe like the times when we lose service
• 23:20
  in certain areas, like the service that they actually
• 23:22
  delivered to your mobile phone is incredible, like the the
• 23:25
  value that you get for what you pay.
• 23:28
  And yeah, they're they're not everyone loves their Romanos,
• 23:32
  but they also, they couldn't live without them.
• 23:34
  But I think people are kind of losing sight of the fact that
• 23:38
  there's kind of there's like 2, this is straight down to be a
• 23:41
  duopoly, right? There's either Starlink
• 23:44
  satellite service, which if you're an M&O, you're going to
• 23:48
  have to make certain trade-offs strategically to work with
• 23:52
  Starlink. And it's always going to be in
• 23:55
  the background that Starlink is competing with, you know, your,
• 24:00
  your fixed wireless business and eventually is going to try to
• 24:05
  take your customers and, and basically, you know, to the
• 24:10
  extent possible replace some of their threshold service that
• 24:14
  you're selling versus working with ASD Space mobile, who is
• 24:18
  doing that in partnership with M and OS is, you know, we is he
• 24:23
  their MO is like, we want to work, we work with carriers,
• 24:27
  we're going to provide services that they can resell low band
• 24:31
  spectrum, supplemental coverage, but also midday spectrum for
• 24:34
  augmented additional capacity. Those are two very different
• 24:38
  value propositions, right? And I think as we've seen play
• 24:43
  out in any number of markets, when you do have high capital
• 24:47
  intensive businesses that are natural duopolies or
• 24:51
  oligopolies, those tend to be very attractive, right?
• 24:54
  And I think today, I'm sorry, not today, but the day that
• 24:59
  Starlink announced, well going back to January, the day that
• 25:03
  AST St. Mobile announced their Legato
• 25:05
  spectrum acquisition, that raised the bar for entry into
• 25:08
  Director of Ice market. And then of course, you know
• 25:11
  Starlink responded by buying this Echostar Spectrum.
• 25:14
  So and by the way, like both of these deals are only for the US,
• 25:18
  right. So as we've kind of conducted
• 25:22
  our due diligence over the last I guess last 48 hours, it's
• 25:27
  clear that Echostar that spectrum is 50 megahertz and
• 25:32
  it's only applicable to the US And then of course, AC Space
• 25:35
  Mobile Bogado is 45 megahertz and it's only applicable to
• 25:39
  North America. And so both players will have to
• 25:44
  undertake this campaign over the coming years to go acquire,
• 25:49
  consolidate more S band and L band spectrum around the world.
• 25:52
  And in some of those processes like it may take some money and
• 25:56
  others it's a regulatory review and assignment a spectrum.
• 26:00
  And you know, we've talked about Europe where in that in that
• 26:04
  particular market, I think perhaps Starlink is going to be
• 26:08
  disadvantaged for when spectrum renewals come up in 2027, just
• 26:12
  given the politicization of Starlink and everything around
• 26:17
  it with Ukraine, you know, a focus on sovereignty and
• 26:21
  defense. But as I mentioned before, you
• 26:25
  know it, it looks like it shaped out to be a 2 horse race,
• 26:29
  perhaps a three horse race, you know, whether global stars and
• 26:33
  all ends up surviving or Iridium in a different, in a different,
• 26:38
  you know, capacity. Maybe they can be 1/3 type of
• 26:42
  player. But I think it's clear that the
• 26:46
  MN OS want choice. ATT and Verizon even said such.
• 26:51
  I guess it was like over Verizon said this 2 days ago and ATT
• 26:55
  said yesterday, you know, choice is good and that's true.
• 26:58
  Choice is good. And right now there's, there's
• 27:01
  two choices. But then the question remains,
• 27:05
  you know, which choice is actually positive and an
• 27:10
  accelerant for your business versus the other choice, which
• 27:14
  is going to become increasingly competitive and a detriment to
• 27:17
  your business. And so I think that is the key
• 27:21
  question and I think that's something that the market at
• 27:24
  least right now totally misses. And maybe over the coming days,
• 27:29
  weeks, they'll start wrapping their heads around it.
• 27:32
  And coming to the point of view, which I think we all understand
• 27:37
  very well because of this is something that we've been
• 27:39
  steeped in for for months, for years, is that, you know, AST is
• 27:46
  a more attractive partner to work with.
• 27:50
  And so, and you know, there there's going to be more than
• 27:52
  one player. It's going to be a duopoly.
• 27:54
  They'll be economics that support a duopoly or perhaps,
• 27:58
  you know, three players. And so, you know, where do you
• 28:02
  want to make your bet? Right.
• 28:04
  And I think, I think, you know, the, the interview last night,
• 28:09
  again, was quite telling where Ilan said the stuff that
• 28:14
  everyone's thinking out loud. And so how do M and OS and how,
• 28:19
  how does the industry react? I think it's also important to
• 28:23
  kind of look back in history, you know, cable companies in the
• 28:28
  US, they all tried to roll out their own mobile network, you
• 28:33
  know, MVNO strategies, you know, whether it was like Spectrum or
• 28:39
  sorry, Charter or Comcast. They, you know, back in, I guess
• 28:46
  it was 2010 or so, these cable companies during spectrum
• 28:49
  auctions, which by the way, like when AWS 3 was auctioned to
• 28:53
  Dish, who won quite a bit of it. There were cable companies that
• 28:57
  were also part of that, that auction as well.
• 28:59
  And, and previously that cable companies had bought some low
• 29:01
  band spectrum because the view was that they were going to try
• 29:04
  to do, they were going to try to bundle service, right.
• 29:08
  And so back then the cable companies did end up rolling out
• 29:12
  a bunch of hotspots. So in major cities, you probably
• 29:14
  see, you know, Xfinity hotspot or whatever in different, you
• 29:19
  know, densely traffic areas. But they, they thought that they
• 29:23
  could string together a service that could compete with the M
• 29:26
  and OS. And of course the M and OS
• 29:28
  decided to help facilitate that through their virtual network
• 29:32
  operator agreements. But the cable companies that
• 29:35
  bought their own spectrum, they, they thought, well, maybe
• 29:36
  eventually I'll build some towers and, and roll out some of
• 29:39
  that spectrum. But at least I'll put a bunch of
• 29:42
  high, you know, Wi-Fi hotspots around them dense areas.
• 29:47
  And then I'll launch a spectrum. For example, Brandon mobile
• 29:52
  service, which will be the actual underlying facilities
• 29:56
  network will be Verizon in AT&T. The reason why the cable
• 30:01
  companies want to do that is that they wanted to, you know,
• 30:05
  get more customers, you know, reduce churn through bundling,
• 30:09
  get more customers. But the issue is that that
• 30:12
  service never got off the ground because cable companies, as we
• 30:14
  all know, the customer service is notoriously bad.
• 30:17
  And people just have that experience.
• 30:19
  Like cable companies legitimately probably have the
• 30:22
  worst customer service. It's something, again, that we
• 30:25
  all rely on. But the outages and and the
• 30:27
  customer service make it painful.
• 30:29
  But I think consumers were turned off by that, right?
• 30:32
  Because they're like, OK, I really rely on my wireless
• 30:36
  service. Do I really want to deal with
• 30:39
  cable company customer service for that critical service?
• 30:42
  And the answer was no. And I think also, you know, I, I
• 30:47
  personally never tried out any of the wireless cable company or
• 30:53
  wireless services provided by cable companies because I, you
• 30:56
  know, I just had too much fear. But I think the integration was,
• 30:59
  was clunky as well. And so I, I'd be curious
• 31:02
  actually, if anybody listen to this, does have or does get the
• 31:06
  wireless service through a cable company.
• 31:07
  But you know, each of the cable companies were able to get a few
• 31:11
  millions in subscribers, but I think for all intents and
• 31:15
  purposes, that was kind of viewed as a failure.
• 31:18
  And so cable companies actually did turn around and they ended
• 31:22
  up selling their spectrum back to M and OS and decided to, you
• 31:27
  know, I guess not pursue actually building out towers
• 31:31
  and, and truly competing head to head with M and OS.
• 31:34
  But that just goes to show that even in, in that situation, the
• 31:39
  MN OS were willing to be, you know, we're, we're willing to
• 31:43
  provide their infrastructure as MVN OS to the cable companies.
• 31:46
  Because I, I think the, the MN OS knew back then, even though,
• 31:52
  you know, they might take some, some share eventually that the
• 31:56
  economics were attractive and they knew that they wouldn't be
• 31:58
  able to compete with them. And so they were comfortable
• 32:00
  with that. But I think as I mentioned
• 32:03
  before, you know, Starlink is a different animal.
• 32:05
  And so it has good reputation in terms of branding.
• 32:10
  And obviously there is the Tesla and SpaceX Halo effect.
• 32:14
  And so I think the, the question for M and OS working with
• 32:18
  Starlink is, is a different, you know, different calculus, right?
• 32:23
  Because I think just from a brand perspective, it could be
• 32:27
  viewed as much more attractive for consumers versus cable
• 32:31
  company. And so so yeah, there's there's
• 32:35
  a real competitive threat there. And as I mentioned before, over
• 32:38
  the, you know, the near term and MNO that works with them.
• 32:40
  The economics might be attractive, but over the long
• 32:42
  term, you end up losing control the customer and you probably
• 32:46
  end up getting becoming a price taker and getting worse
• 32:50
  economics. The other thing that's really
• 32:53
  important in all this discussion is the handset guys, right?
• 32:56
  And so Elon has boy with the idea at least, you know, talked
• 33:00
  about potentially having an X phone or SpaceX phone or Tesla
• 33:04
  phone, whichever bring you on the slap on it.
• 33:07
  But if Elon does end up owning the customer, then why wouldn't
• 33:12
  that customer be willing to buy a phone for him, right?
• 33:17
  As long as it's good enough. Or maybe it's going to be really
• 33:19
  great, who knows? But I think for Elon, if you can
• 33:22
  imagine like putting having an X branded phone that comes with
• 33:28
  all the apps already installed and runs XAI and maybe has great
• 33:32
  integration. You know, you drop it, you use
• 33:34
  it in your Tesla car and and it's like fully integrated.
• 33:38
  There's a lot of interesting things they could do with that,
• 33:39
  right? But on the flip side, like if
• 33:43
  you're Apple or your Samsung, you're probably shitting your
• 33:47
  pants, right? Because that's your bread and
• 33:49
  butter business. And then what if Elon comes in
• 33:52
  and tries to, you know, take control of your customer?
• 33:56
  And then, and it's not just about the hardware, right?
• 33:58
  For Apple, it's about services revenue, it's about the App
• 34:02
  Store, it's about, you know, selling iCloud subscriptions.
• 34:07
  It's about all those things. And so I think what people kind
• 34:10
  of lose sight of is that it's not just mobile phone service.
• 34:14
  Like obviously the network is important.
• 34:16
  It's not just a headset. Hardware is important, but it's
• 34:19
  the applications on top of it, right?
• 34:21
  And so for Elan to sell more X subscriptions to get people to
• 34:26
  use and you know XAI and you know, that will be more data fed
• 34:31
  into his, the learning algorithms.
• 34:34
  And I mean, there's a whole host of implications, right?
• 34:38
  And so it's not just AM and O problem or handset problem, it's
• 34:44
  also like a complete vertical stack, right?
• 34:46
  So, and this is where other companies come into play,
• 34:50
  whether you're talking about Microsoft or Amazon or Google,
• 34:55
  you know, is it the Alon stack or is it going to be the open,
• 34:59
  open stack of various companies working together, which I think
• 35:03
  that's where AST space mobile fits in.
• 35:05
  But yeah, this is this is a much bigger strategic question than
• 35:11
  just AST space mobile. Then M and OS.
• 35:15
  It's it's broader, right? So it's the tech ecosystem.
• 35:18
  And so that's why I think AST plays a critical role, right,
• 35:22
  because satellite coverage today, the way that we think
• 35:26
  about it, it's very simplistic. But if you think about it over
• 35:30
  the long run, like, you know, MNO say, hey, we've got 99% of
• 35:33
  the population covered, Yeah, you do where they live.
• 35:36
  But in terms of geography, only 50 to 70% of land is covered,
• 35:42
  right? And so when it comes to drones,
• 35:45
  autonomous, you know, vehicles, trucks, anything, you're going
• 35:50
  to need to have coverage, 100% persistent coverage all the time
• 35:55
  for, for data. And some of that coverage will
• 35:57
  need to be, it's OK if it's low, low data throughput coverage,
• 36:02
  low, you know, high latency. But probably for a lot of these
• 36:05
  apps, you're going to need high throughput and low latency,
• 36:08
  right? And so that's where you know,
• 36:12
  having a service like AC6 Mobile where it's true broadband
• 36:17
  directly to any compatible 3 GPP device, that's going to be
• 36:22
  important, right? And so as you know, we've got
• 36:26
  these satellites that are on the cost.
• 36:28
  I mean it's imminent. We'll see exactly when they
• 36:31
  launch. But you've got broadband
• 36:33
  connectivity that's going to be rolled out in 2026, whereas your
• 36:38
  Starlink, this this spectrum is going to be a game trigger for
• 36:42
  them, right? Like they are going to have some
• 36:43
  level of broadband connectivity, but you're probably looking more
• 36:47
  at 20272028 when it gets rolled out.
• 36:50
  So, so there's going to be a time, there's going to be some
• 36:55
  time before that actually happens.
• 36:56
  And by the time Starlink rolls out satellites that support
• 37:01
  this, this spectrum that they purchased, you know, that should
• 37:04
  be around the same time as TS rolling out its big band
• 37:09
  constellation, which will have legato spectrum featured and any
• 37:14
  other additional L&S pin spectrum that they procure
• 37:18
  around the world. But but yeah, I mean this This
• 37:21
  is why I've kind of I couldn't go back to you the whole thought
• 37:26
  and idea that you know, and This is why Google made us for you to
• 37:30
  get investment in ASD space mobile like you need to have an
• 37:35
  open ecosystem that is not going to shut down the walled garden
• 37:40
  to your apps, right. And that that's why I think
• 37:43
  eventually, not, not today, not maybe in months, but eventually,
• 37:47
  I think Apple, Amazon, I think all these players Microsoft will
• 37:50
  make or will contemplate making an investment in base T source
• 37:53
  mobile because you need to have an open environment for their
• 37:56
  apps to run on, right? Because I think, I think
• 38:01
  eventually, you know, Elan will have his own stack, right?
• 38:07
  And, and it's going to be valuable and, and some people
• 38:11
  are going to use it, but for other companies, they're,
• 38:13
  they're going to want something that's open.
• 38:16
  And so that's why I think there's this tremendous value
• 38:18
  for, for AST currently, because it's, it's enabling, you know,
• 38:24
  70% of the market share, M&O market share in the US, but also
• 38:28
  globally. You've got 50 mobile network
• 38:31
  operators around the world. And so maintain that level of
• 38:35
  openness I think is important. And it's, it's not just for
• 38:38
  consumers, right? It's also for governments, for
• 38:41
  first responders networks, but also for defense applications,
• 38:45
  right? And so I think as we all know,
• 38:49
  you know, when the lawn had AAI guess it is when you had
• 38:54
  problems with with Trump and threatened to pull NASA missions
• 38:59
  and access to the space station. I think that gave U.S.
• 39:04
  government a huge about a wake up call that, you know, you
• 39:08
  can't rely on one company or one founder or one person in
• 39:13
  particular for all your critical needs.
• 39:15
  Like you actually need to have dual, maybe triple sources of or
• 39:20
  providers, right? So whether that's launched,
• 39:23
  whether that's communications, imaging, any number of things,
• 39:25
  right. You and I think, of course, as
• 39:29
  you Europeans found out when Starling was, you know, cut
• 39:32
  their service over Ukraine, they themselves want some level of,
• 39:38
  you know, having sovereignty and control over these assets is
• 39:42
  important, which is why AST, you know, developed the joint
• 39:47
  venture Sacco with with Vodafone, where Vodafone is
• 39:49
  leading that that venture in Europe and where you've got 21
• 39:54
  member countries, you know, Eminos that operate in those
• 39:57
  member countries that that aren't Vodafone have indicated
• 40:01
  interest of signing up for that service.
• 40:03
  And so this is all important stuff.
• 40:06
  But yeah, I think for the handset guys, like this is not
• 40:09
  only for M and OS, but the handset guys existential
• 40:11
  question of how far does your Starling go And and in order to
• 40:18
  counterbalance at who do you work with?
• 40:20
  I mean, the end of the day like this isn't winner take, all
• 40:24
  right? It's going to be just like any
• 40:26
  market, Windows, Mac. You know Samsung, Apple, you
• 40:32
  know who do you want to work with, right.
• 40:34
  So you can either work with Starlink or you can work with
• 40:36
  AST space mobile. I think it's like pretty simple
• 40:39
  or straightforward. I think the market today is
• 40:43
  pricing in or or is worried because uncertainty that perhaps
• 40:47
  Starlink is going to be winner takes all.
• 40:49
  But I think as we we know quite well, it's going to be a 22
• 40:54
  horse race and these companies will have to pick which side
• 40:59
  they they work with, right. I guess the other thing I would
• 41:02
  say about handsets is that it's not an easy thing to do, right.
• 41:07
  So it for those that remember Microsoft try to create their
• 41:13
  own handset and that failed. And you know, but then even
• 41:17
  putting for the most consumer sector centric company in the
• 41:21
  world that's done quite well on Amazon, Amazon try to come out
• 41:24
  with their own handset. And there were rumors that they
• 41:27
  were going to enter into envy in their relationships with, with
• 41:30
  carriers and, you know, come out with their own handset.
• 41:33
  Of course, that never came to fruition because it was just too
• 41:35
  tough. And so, you know, these, these
• 41:40
  are interesting ideas to, to talk about and, and the
• 41:44
  potential is obviously there, but we're, we're pretty, I mean,
• 41:48
  we're, there has to be a lot of multiple steps to get there.
• 41:51
  And then even then, there's no guarantee of success if Starling
• 41:54
  decides to go down that path. But anyway, I think I think
• 42:01
  these are all important, you know, topics that that the
• 42:06
  investors, institutions, but also St. analysts, like they'll
• 42:09
  start writing about. I mean, I saw some of the
• 42:12
  initial reports from a few banks that were saying like, oh, this
• 42:16
  Sterling serve. This doesn't mean Sterling's can
• 42:18
  compete with M&O's and it's going to be complementary.
• 42:20
  And yeah, that's, that's the, that is, that's the, the
• 42:24
  official line, the PR. Like I, I read that in
• 42:29
  Starling's special release, we want to partner with M and OS
• 42:32
  and it's going to be great hunky Dory.
• 42:34
  But I think when, you know, when Alan spoke with his buddies at
• 42:39
  the All In podcast and everybody in tech is thinking it's like,
• 42:43
  oh, eventually he wants to compete with M and OS.
• 42:45
  He wants to eat their lunch. And so that's, that's only I
• 42:49
  think the street will eventually start figuring out.
• 42:52
  And once it does, that's where you're going to see this, this
• 42:59
  change because you know, the the Echostar deal, I think validated
• 43:04
  AST space mobiles like Legato spectrum strategy.
• 43:08
  It, it validated, obviously Starlink getting into direct to
• 43:11
  sell in general validated the market that AST created.
• 43:16
  But now, you know, now that the chess pieces are really now
• 43:21
  we're in full swing, right? Like before, if I could, the
• 43:26
  analogy would be that we were playing a traditional chess game
• 43:29
  of where each, each player gets 2 hours to make the moves.
• 43:33
  But now we're entering into speed chess, not not blitz yet,
• 43:37
  but maybe each of players gets 30 minutes.
• 43:39
  But eventually as things are evolving, it's going to be a
• 43:43
  game where players get 15 minutes to make their moves or 5
• 43:46
  minutes. You know, it's going to be
• 43:47
  rapidly evolving. And I think now we're seeing
• 43:50
  especially on the cusp of AC Space Mobile launching their,
• 43:54
  their, their network with the multi launch campaign.
• 43:58
  You know, we can debate whether that's going to happen in
• 44:02
  October or November, but you're going to have this launch
• 44:04
  cadence that just starts going to full swing.
• 44:07
  I think it's going to focus people on the real strategic
• 44:11
  issues here, right? And and who are the winners and
• 44:14
  who are going to be the losers. And I think to me at least, it
• 44:19
  seems crystal clear that AST space Mobile is going to be a
• 44:22
  huge winner in this and they're going to facilitate for people
• 44:26
  who want an open environment. And then there's going to be
• 44:29
  star link, right? That's going to eventually kind
• 44:32
  of try to push this vertically integrated stacked consumers and
• 44:37
  compete with M and OS. And so I think, you know that
• 44:40
  the market to a degree that at least maybe investors don't
• 44:44
  fully understand that, but the M and OS understand that.
• 44:46
  I mean, as I've driven over the point many times since Starlink
• 44:51
  announced their service that they were going to pursue this,
• 44:54
  this this business back in August of 2022.
• 44:58
  You know, their first customer was T-Mobile and since then
• 45:01
  they've only announced seven others, right?
• 45:04
  So they have 8 M and OS working with them globally, which
• 45:06
  represent I think like 270, No 2I, I forget the exact number,
• 45:12
  but around let's say 250 million subscribers.
• 45:16
  Whereas AST since announcing what their plans back in, you
• 45:21
  know, 2020, they've signed up over 50 global M and OS with
• 45:26
  representing over 3 billion subscribers, right?
• 45:28
  So I think the M and OS for the most part know what working with
• 45:33
  Starlink means for them, you know, from an existential threat
• 45:38
  standpoint, but but I don't think investors know that yet
• 45:42
  and eventually they will in the coming in the coming months.
• 45:45
  So anyway, let me see if there's some questions here which I'm
• 45:54
  trying to cover. What's the over under on how
• 45:59
  many times CNBC can mention space based direct to device
• 46:02
  broadband without mentioning HD space mobile?
• 46:04
  I like that rhetorical question. I think, yeah, I, I hate to say
• 46:09
  it, it's like I sound like a crypto bro, but we're early.
• 46:13
  I think, I think there's more awareness about HD 6 mobile now
• 46:17
  then clearly there was a year ago.
• 46:19
  But but now you're going to, you're going to have this whole
• 46:22
  deluge of articles that are in about what Starlink is doing.
• 46:27
  And if those journalists do their job and they dig around
• 46:30
  and they're and you know, they, they see who the other players
• 46:33
  are, I think you'll in a positive way, you'll see more
• 46:37
  awareness about AST space mobile.
• 46:39
  But you know, obviously it's going to take people some time
• 46:42
  to get over the hump of like, well, it's SpaceX.
• 46:43
  So clearly they're just going to own the market like they won and
• 46:47
  there's going to be no room for anyone else.
• 46:50
  I think it's for obviously the people who dig a little deep and
• 46:55
  peel back layers of the onion will recognize, realize that oh,
• 46:58
  AST has a technological lead and has all the right partnerships.
• 47:04
  And so they're going to be very formidable, right?
• 47:07
  And Starlink is catching up. They've been catching up since
• 47:11
  the beginning, whether that was entering to this market after
• 47:14
  AST did and buying spectrum after AST did.
• 47:18
  They're kind of like the Meteor Company, I guess.
• 47:20
  But but yeah, it sometimes it takes the market time to
• 47:23
  recognize that, which I think as I mentioned before, it's going
• 47:27
  to, it's going to take time for the stock price to kind of
• 47:30
  settle out on turning investors who are worried versus people
• 47:35
  like us who see tremendous opportunity, right.
• 47:39
  But yeah, what we'll see if the mainstream media figures it out.
• 47:43
  You know, I, I don't, I would expect them to eventually, but
• 47:47
  but we'll see especially. Well, I take that back as AT&T
• 47:51
  and Verizon crank up the marketing as they should.
• 47:55
  Perhaps that's going to change. Let's see Philip Rye T-Mobile
• 48:02
  cannot abandoned Starlink yet rising new hasn't committed to
• 48:05
  anyone yet could just take its place.
• 48:08
  President dilemma Teemo wants to be taken over by SpaceX.
• 48:11
  It should be talking to AT&T and AC to ensure a spot at the
• 48:15
  table. Obey later.
• 48:18
  I OK T-Mobile can't abandoned Starlink.
• 48:21
  I agree with that. They can't abandoned them yet,
• 48:24
  but at some point that relationship is going to become
• 48:27
  pretty tenuous. Verizon hasn't committed to
• 48:30
  anyone yet could take its place. That's not true Verizon.
• 48:34
  So it's kind of funny. It's like news of the spectrum
• 48:37
  purchase makes people immediately flip the table and
• 48:41
  think like what has happened strategically is irrelevant now.
• 48:46
  I think people lose sight of the fact that we just had our
• 48:50
  supplemental coverage from space application that was jointly
• 48:53
  submitted with AT&T, Verizon and Firstnet that was just accepted
• 48:57
  on Friday of last week. And so I think people, you know,
• 49:02
  in in the heat of the news forgot like 08 Verizon is an
• 49:07
  investor and they've given us prepayments and we they've
• 49:10
  contributed their 850 megahertz spectrum and we have
• 49:13
  application, you know, spectrum leasing agreement with them and
• 49:16
  we have an application at the FCC for full commercial service.
• 49:20
  So I don't think that's changing.
• 49:22
  If you're asking the question of if Verizon could act as an MVNO
• 49:26
  for Starlink, yeah, I think they could.
• 49:30
  But I think at the same time, again, going back to, you know,
• 49:36
  the long run implications of that, do you want to give up
• 49:39
  your customers to star link in exchange for some near term
• 49:42
  profits? If I was a Verizon board member,
• 49:45
  I would say no, but I'm not a Verizon board member, so who
• 49:49
  knows. But yeah, I think and and by the
• 49:54
  way, like this whole idea of SpaceX buying wireless carrier.
• 49:57
  So let's let's let's go down that path for a minute.
• 50:00
  So let's say SpaceX decides like they need to be, they need to
• 50:04
  own wireless companies because obviously in order to access low
• 50:08
  band spectrum and built out towers, that's what you have to
• 50:10
  do. So I think what SpaceX, let's
• 50:14
  just say it's worth four $400 billion today.
• 50:18
  Clearly they don't have cash to go pay all cash for a wireless
• 50:21
  carrier because even in the spectrum purchase they had to
• 50:25
  issue stock. But T-Mobile, just give you an
• 50:28
  idea, Enterprise value today is 377 billion.
• 50:32
  So you're looking at basically a merger of equals, right?
• 50:35
  And then along through that transaction would basically have
• 50:39
  to give up control of SpaceX. So I don't think that's
• 50:42
  possible. But let's just run through,
• 50:45
  let's just say like it is possible that somehow let's
• 50:48
  SpaceX is valued at one $1 trillion tomorrow, right?
• 50:53
  And so then they're able to pay a reasonable acquisition premium
• 50:57
  for T-Mobile. And by the way, like private
• 51:00
  valuations are very different than public valuations.
• 51:02
  Like I think I would argue that SpaceX, their valuation is
• 51:06
  probably somewhat frothy, right? But let's say they, if you're a
• 51:10
  T-Mobile board member or Deutsche Telecom, which owns
• 51:13
  just under 50% of T-Mobile, like are you comfortable taking
• 51:17
  SpaceX paper like stock or it, it, I kind of joked about this
• 51:22
  before, but it's almost like back in the day when AOL when
• 51:25
  their, their stock was like highly inflated, they, it went
• 51:27
  on required Time Warner. And then of course, you know,
• 51:31
  they issued all stock. And then of course, when the
• 51:34
  Internet bubble burst like that, the combined entity completely
• 51:38
  cratered and it was hugely value destructive.
• 51:41
  And then Time Warner ultimately ended up selling AOL 2, I think
• 51:45
  it was Yahoo for pennies of the dollar.
• 51:48
  And then, you know, that was like a whole crazy, crazy
• 51:52
  situation. But but yeah, if you're
• 51:54
  T-Mobile, do you take SpaceX paper?
• 51:58
  And then if you're a SpaceX shareholder, like, do you want
• 52:01
  to own an MNO? Right.
• 52:03
  And, and this is just for the US, obviously US is like a very
• 52:06
  valuable and important market. It's the most profitable market.
• 52:10
  It's owning an MNO here is not a bad idea if it's if it's truly a
• 52:16
  an important stepping stone to what you need to do over the
• 52:18
  long run. But I would argue for SpaceX who
• 52:20
  wants to get to Mars. Like yeah, cash flows are
• 52:24
  important, but only an M&O maybe isn't the best way to get there.
• 52:30
  Like you can get a lot of the benefits by partnering with M
• 52:33
  and OS to the extent they want to partner with you without
• 52:36
  having to own one. But let's just say you decide to
• 52:39
  buy T bowl and and for all intense purposes along loses
• 52:44
  control the SpaceX because you you have to issue a decent
• 52:49
  amount of stock to do that. Then what do you do next?
• 52:53
  Right. So then the rest of the Yemenos
• 52:55
  around the world like, Oh my gosh, this guy bought he bought
• 52:58
  T-Mobile. It looks like he wants to
• 53:01
  compete with us. So what do we do?
• 53:04
  Maybe they do work with him or maybe they don't.
• 53:07
  But then if Elon does want to or SpaceX, if they do want to
• 53:13
  continue down that path, then you basically have to go buy a
• 53:16
  mobile network operator in every market, right?
• 53:19
  And that's not cheap at all, right.
• 53:22
  And so, and then on top of that, are regulators comfortable with
• 53:25
  that? Like let's say US regulators are
• 53:28
  OK with you buying T-Mobile. They are, they then are, would a
• 53:35
  European in the UK, would they be OK with a USMNO buying and
• 53:41
  operated there, especially given, you know, how things
• 53:45
  quickly change politically in the US landscape, right.
• 53:48
  So, so yeah, there, there's a whole host of, you know, that
• 53:52
  first step seems interesting, but from an economic standpoint,
• 53:55
  it's, it would be very expensive.
• 53:57
  There's control issues. But then and then once you kind
• 54:00
  of take that first step, how do you parlay that into buying more
• 54:04
  network operators around the world?
• 54:05
  Or maybe you don't, right? Maybe just partner.
• 54:07
  But anyway, they're, they're obviously it's a very complex
• 54:10
  issue. You know, people on Twitter,
• 54:13
  they just kind of throw around, Oh yeah, he can just go buy this
• 54:18
  and everything's solved. Or people, not guys on the All
• 54:20
  In podcast are like, yeah, that sounds like a great idea.
• 54:22
  Just just whip some money around and it'll happen.
• 54:25
  It's not that easy or straightforward.
• 54:27
  So there's a lot of things to think about.
• 54:32
  Let's see, please compare AST and Starlink as DODPNTIOT
• 54:38
  potential solutions. Yeah, I mean Starlink is already
• 54:42
  doing some of this stuff today with Star Shield and their
• 54:46
  consolation. What differentiates AC series
• 54:49
  mobile is that it is it it has a differentiated large phase array
• 54:57
  that can do very specific things better or or uniquely do them
• 55:03
  that Starling Kent and you know, Katzke has written in depth on
• 55:09
  this. But as a company invention,
• 55:10
  there's there's like 10 unique use cases already that are non
• 55:14
  communications use cases. So I think the relevance and
• 55:17
  this is the part where, yeah, we can ham and Haw about the
• 55:21
  commercial side of the business and who's going to win and how
• 55:23
  quickly it's going to take. But I think on the defense side,
• 55:25
  I think it's, I think here and, and by the way, from the 50 to
• 55:29
  75 million of revenue that we're expecting the second-half, I
• 55:31
  think that seems like it's, you know, in addition to gateways
• 55:36
  for that, that are being sold for commercial service, a decent
• 55:40
  amount of the revenues are defence related.
• 55:42
  So, and as we've, you know, as I've talked about, I think the
• 55:46
  US government wants more than one supplier to rely on,
• 55:50
  especially, you know, suppliers that are closely held by a
• 55:55
  Spizzard founder who might be political like, you know, that
• 55:58
  that could be an issue, right? So, so I think I think AST is
• 56:03
  well positioned for government and defense business.
• 56:06
  And I think given the events that unfolded between, you know,
• 56:12
  LON and Trump over the last the previous months, I think that is
• 56:18
  more important now than ever. Let's see these questions I've
• 56:25
  already asked. What are your thoughts on
• 56:30
  launch? Yeah, I mean, there's some
• 56:33
  people who I guess are newer to the situation who are like,
• 56:36
  well, what if SpaceX just shuts down, doesn't launch any
• 56:40
  satellites for AC space, mobile? That's not how it works.
• 56:44
  Like SpaceX is a, you know, Starlink is a separate division.
• 56:48
  SpaceX launch is different, as we've emphasized over and over
• 56:53
  and over again, SpaceX as and we'll continue to launch
• 56:56
  competitors, satellites, right? And they launched all one level
• 56:59
  satellites, Global Star, Iridium, any number of
• 57:02
  competitors they've launched. You know, when people make the
• 57:07
  point that perhaps there's some potentially nefarious things
• 57:10
  going on, I mean, yeah, eventually there could be.
• 57:13
  But we also have these things called antitrust laws in the US,
• 57:16
  Glass Steagall Act and Clayton Act or so not Glass Steagall,
• 57:19
  that's for banks, but the Clayton Act and Sherman Act.
• 57:22
  And so in the US there's like there's the rule law.
• 57:26
  And you know, I think if SpaceX were to do things that were anti
• 57:31
  competitive, then that would just tighten concerns from U.S.
• 57:35
  government, but you know, regulators, but also from
• 57:37
  defense side as well. And so I think you've seen and I
• 57:41
  have a tremendous amount of respect for SpaceX, like you've
• 57:44
  seen them act in a pro competitive manner because
• 57:46
  ultimately they want to make money and fund the mission to
• 57:51
  Mars. And so launching satellites is
• 57:54
  their business, right? And so if you start shutting
• 57:57
  down access for some of your customers and perhaps other
• 58:01
  customers won't be comfortable in using you.
• 58:03
  And then yeah, obviously there's there's Blue Origin, there's
• 58:06
  Rocket Lab, there's any number of companies are looking to get
• 58:08
  into the business. You don't want to act in the
• 58:12
  anti competitive manner that ends up fueling the launch
• 58:16
  businesses of your competitors, right?
• 58:18
  So there is some ration rationality to working with
• 58:22
  competitors because it's not the only thing you're doing, right?
• 58:25
  It's not just it's not as if SpaceX is just focused on
• 58:29
  Starlink, like they actually are focused on launch and getting
• 58:32
  Starship working and eventually sending missions to Mars.
• 58:37
  So I think it's, you know, I think from a launch perspective,
• 58:41
  at least from what I can tell, I don't I don't think there's any
• 58:43
  issues there. Let's see, let's see the other
• 58:51
  questions here just to let's see, just confirm Starlink's
• 58:58
  newly acquired Spectrum Accord chip modifications.
• 59:00
  Yes, that's right. Legato spectrum can be utilized
• 59:03
  with current phones, correct? I'm not sure.
• 59:06
  I think Legato is in some phones.
• 59:09
  I don't think it's in all phones, but I think I mean, I
• 59:13
  think for both, they're both spectrums like they will have to
• 59:17
  be included in chipsets, right. And so for Legato, I from what I
• 59:23
  understand, I think it's further along.
• 59:25
  And so you're going to start seeing those phones that can
• 59:28
  utilize the spectrum sometime in 2027 as well.
• 59:35
  But that's when the consolation will be, you know being will be
• 59:39
  up and running. And so I guess I can step back.
• 59:43
  It's important to note that currently ASTC Mobile, the plan
• 59:47
  is to launch their Bluebird Block V Bluebird satellites and
• 59:50
  that is imminent in terms of deploying that constellation.
• 59:54
  In particular that constellation works with 600 to 900 megahertz
• 59:58
  low band spectrum, which is incorporated in all phones
• 1:00:01
  today. The service is compatible with
• 1:00:06
  phones, unmodified phones that you use every day today, right.
• 1:00:09
  So that's that's one kind of piece of the puzzle.
• 1:00:13
  The second piece of the puzzle is this whole deployment of mid
• 1:00:17
  band spectrum, which is for HDCC mobile, it's Legato that's their
• 1:00:22
  own spectrum. And then for Starlink that is
• 1:00:25
  the AWS 3 spectrum that that's those two spectrum and in
• 1:00:29
  particular are going to be rolled out in mobile phones
• 1:00:32
  sometime in 2027. I think for I understand, I
• 1:00:35
  think Legato is is ahead of the curve on that.
• 1:00:39
  But yeah, I mean that the that cancellation is not going to be
• 1:00:43
  up and running until sometime in 2027 anyhow.
• 1:00:46
  And so that and that's for both AC and Starlink.
• 1:00:51
  The other thing I would mention is that there is other big band
• 1:00:54
  spectrum that's cellular base that is not MSS.
• 1:00:58
  And so carriers today do use spectrum in 1.7 all the way to
• 1:01:04
  2.6 gigahertz. That is not an s s.
• 1:01:07
  And so to the extent that AST gets additional MO's that want
• 1:01:10
  to deploy this service on their cellular spectrum in those
• 1:01:13
  frequent and use, they will be able to do so when that mid band
• 1:01:18
  constellation is up and and commercially for star link.
• 1:01:23
  To the extent that there are you know, MO's that want to work
• 1:01:26
  with them that want to bring their own spectrum to the table
• 1:01:29
  for supplemental coverage or perhaps primary coverage, they
• 1:01:32
  can do that as well. So it it's this spectrum in
• 1:01:36
  particular, it needs chipsets and it needs a new satellite.
• 1:01:40
  The same goes for AST. But then beyond the spectrum
• 1:01:45
  carriers that do bring mid band spectrum to the table and say,
• 1:01:47
  Hey, I want you to light this up.
• 1:01:50
  They they both can do that too. Let's see, could Omni space S
• 1:01:58
  band be a significant piece of the puzzle here?
• 1:02:01
  That's a good watch. I'm not sure.
• 1:02:02
  I think Omni Space is this like paper consolation company.
• 1:02:06
  They have some spectrum rights like I think in South America
• 1:02:09
  and other places. Maybe they get acquired, maybe
• 1:02:14
  they lose their licenses, maybe. I mean as I've discussed before
• 1:02:18
  like SPAM, it's kind of like a backwater where none of these
• 1:02:22
  licenses are a majority of places they haven't been
• 1:02:25
  assigned. And so I think as you see this
• 1:02:28
  market developed into the two player race, maybe a three, a
• 1:02:30
  third player shows up, you'll see regulators probably allocate
• 1:02:35
  sections of S ban to the the various players.
• 1:02:38
  And then that's just kind of how the market's going to work.
• 1:02:41
  To the extent someone already owns rights, then they'll need
• 1:02:43
  to either, you know, perhaps they might be acquired or they
• 1:02:47
  might enter in some partnership with ASC or Starlink, right.
• 1:02:51
  So that's potentially how things could go.
• 1:02:55
  Is there a real estate path for T-Mobile to leave Starlink?
• 1:02:59
  Yeah, I think there is. I think there's a year of
• 1:03:02
  exclusivity, right. So probably sometime in 2026,
• 1:03:07
  T-Mobile could leave Starlink and then join AST Space Mobile
• 1:03:12
  for I understand, I think AT&T has exclusivity with AST Space
• 1:03:18
  Mobile in that AST cannot use anybody else.
• 1:03:22
  But Verizon is Verizon has they have the ability to to
• 1:03:27
  potentially work with others. So that's the reason why, for
• 1:03:29
  example, they work with Skylo today for simple texting with
• 1:03:32
  their GO, you know, GO service, but then they also work with AST
• 1:03:35
  space Mobile. So you could see a situation
• 1:03:39
  where T-Mobile drops Starlink and moves over to ASTI guess any
• 1:03:43
  question is like, would AT&T and Verizon be OK with that?
• 1:03:48
  Which I, I guess, you know, prior to Starlink buying
• 1:03:51
  spectrum, they probably we're not OK with that.
• 1:03:54
  But then with, with Starlink buying spectrum, maybe they will
• 1:03:58
  be OK with that. Maybe it's important to have a
• 1:04:02
  unified competitive, you know, balance counterbalance to what
• 1:04:07
  potentially Starlink ultimately will try to do.
• 1:04:10
  I this, this question also brings up a fun point, which is
• 1:04:14
  at sky low. This this sky low is basically
• 1:04:18
  like a middleware company. They, they provide software and
• 1:04:23
  they and you know, it's incorporated in devices where
• 1:04:26
  they can allow for, you know, for newer phones that have
• 1:04:31
  strong antennas, a Geo satellite connectivity.
• 1:04:34
  I think it's like at most a few 100, you know, 60-70 kilobits
• 1:04:39
  per second, like truly text messaging and, and, and
• 1:04:44
  reportedly that I think they have some algorithms where they
• 1:04:46
  might be able to do some level of voice.
• 1:04:49
  But Skyler for all intensive purposes is the reseller of Geo
• 1:04:52
  satellite services. So Skyler works with like
• 1:04:55
  ViaSat, Echostar, Legato and a few other players and they
• 1:05:01
  aggregate their services and provide it to you.
• 1:05:03
  For example, you know, Verizon offers it on a few of the phones
• 1:05:06
  today. What's I guess strategically
• 1:05:08
  interesting for Skylo is that Legato is being bought by AST
• 1:05:13
  space Humble. So Skyler becomes customer of
• 1:05:15
  AST and then Echostar the the portions of the satellite
• 1:05:21
  spectrum that I think are potentially going to be
• 1:05:24
  utilized. And I'm not sure I I've got to
• 1:05:27
  dig more into this, but, but yeah, I mean, perhaps Skyla will
• 1:05:31
  become a customer to a degree of Starlink.
• 1:05:35
  And so it's kind of like the Office Space movie where the
• 1:05:40
  guys are interviewing employees are like, so exactly what is it
• 1:05:43
  you do here? And for Skyla, it's like they're
• 1:05:46
  a bit aware guy kind of shuffling papers from one end to
• 1:05:49
  another. I don't really know what ends up
• 1:05:52
  happening with that company because they they don't really
• 1:05:55
  own anything. They're just kind of a middle
• 1:05:57
  layer to enable connectivity. But anyway, let's see when are
• 1:06:07
  we launching something? That's a good question.
• 1:06:10
  I mean, the satellite's ready. There is speculation as to, I
• 1:06:15
  mean there was like it was presentation from Israel
• 1:06:19
  yesterday saying that and I think it's probably wrong is my
• 1:06:23
  guess. But they they've said like
• 1:06:25
  they're the launching of FM ones could be in September.
• 1:06:28
  I guess it's possible, but my guess is it's probably more like
• 1:06:31
  October. And then you've probably, our
• 1:06:34
  guess is like you, FMT will get launched either on Blue Origin
• 1:06:40
  or SpaceX as a, as on SpaceX as a potentially rideshare or a
• 1:06:44
  Blue Origin as part of one of the test launches for, for New
• 1:06:49
  Glenna. But yeah, once that starts, then
• 1:06:53
  you kind of kick off this campaign of every one to two
• 1:06:56
  months, right? And then you're going to be
• 1:06:58
  hurling batches of three to six to is up to 8 and many as eight
• 1:07:04
  of these things lock 2 satellites into space.
• 1:07:07
  And so that's when that's when we start cooking folks.
• 1:07:10
  So, but yeah, I think obviously the the market is waiting
• 1:07:15
  impatiently for when we get an announced or sorry launch
• 1:07:20
  window. As we all know, like when you're
• 1:07:24
  when you go for launch, you'll get some kind of range and then
• 1:07:28
  it gets narrowed and you get closer and closer.
• 1:07:30
  And then obviously everything's kind of subject to conditions,
• 1:07:33
  whether that's weather or other things for launch to to go off.
• 1:07:37
  But I think it's soon probably needs happen sooner for a lot of
• 1:07:41
  people who are nervous. For me, I'm OK.
• 1:07:46
  I in my mind it's going to happen and the rest of them are
• 1:07:49
  going to happen. So I'm OK with days, few weeks.
• 1:07:53
  I mean, we'll see any golden Dome updates?
• 1:07:57
  No go golden Dome updates. But I feel pretty strongly about
• 1:08:02
  it, as do others. And just based off of due
• 1:08:04
  diligence, whether it's just kind of reading the tea leaves
• 1:08:08
  from management commentary or, you know, discussions with them
• 1:08:11
  and kind of reading the body language, but then also due
• 1:08:16
  diligence with with people who are familiar with Golden Dome
• 1:08:21
  or, you know, contractors, things like that.
• 1:08:24
  It seems like it's going to happen.
• 1:08:26
  So the question is timing, right?
• 1:08:29
  And just given that Trump wants, you know, Golden Dome to be
• 1:08:34
  active and and deployed before he ends his term, which is, you
• 1:08:39
  know, a little over three years from now, that's not much time.
• 1:08:41
  And so things start, they start, you know, they need to start
• 1:08:45
  happening now. And so I think in terms of
• 1:08:49
  awards and some of them when I think some of the initial awards
• 1:08:54
  from, and I forget exactly where this came from, but I think we
• 1:08:57
  might start seeing something towards the end of September.
• 1:09:01
  And so, you know, whether AST is part of that additional award or
• 1:09:05
  maybe it's subsequent ones, we know it was right.
• 1:09:07
  But I think given the unique capabilities of the company,
• 1:09:10
  satellites I think will be a key part of Golden Dome and or other
• 1:09:16
  defense initiatives, whether with the SDA or DIU.
• 1:09:20
  It seems like every day there's new articles talking about
• 1:09:24
  adjustments to these programs or some things are are getting
• 1:09:28
  boosted, some games are being deemphasized.
• 1:09:30
  But yeah, we'll see. I mean, we've got, as Scott
• 1:09:33
  mentioned in his call last week, we've got a number of programs
• 1:09:36
  of record with a Defense Department or I guess Department
• 1:09:40
  of War now, which you know, programs of record have the
• 1:09:45
  opportunity to grow into hundreds of millions of revenue
• 1:09:48
  each annually. So, so that's a big deal, right?
• 1:09:54
  And as we know the US government, they want more than
• 1:09:57
  one supplier. They want they want two or more,
• 1:10:00
  possibly even because they don't want to rely on a single point
• 1:10:03
  of failure or a single person, right.
• 1:10:05
  So, so that's important. Let's see, I think it's probably
• 1:10:12
  most of the questions. I've been rambling here for a
• 1:10:14
  pretty long time. Oh, there's some more questions
• 1:10:17
  places. I think that's pretty much it.
• 1:10:25
  Someone did ask like what's the difference between legato
• 1:10:27
  spectrum and the AWS 4 spectrum? AWS 4 is depending on if it's
• 1:10:34
  downlink or uplink, it's like 1.9 to 2 gigahertz and then for
• 1:10:40
  legato it's 1.5 to 1.6 gigahertz.
• 1:10:45
  And so AW 4 is kind of more mid bands.
• 1:10:49
  Legato is lower mid band and so lower mid band you know, you'll
• 1:10:54
  have greater proposition propagation and coverage.
• 1:10:59
  Mid bands, you know what, they might be slightly better
• 1:11:02
  capacity, but I would say for the on the legato side, yeah, I
• 1:11:08
  mean there's, there's some unique aspects there that will
• 1:11:12
  give I, I think give AC some advantages.
• 1:11:15
  You know, I think the Department of Defense or Department of War
• 1:11:18
  already has some applications working in and around that
• 1:11:21
  spectrum. And so perhaps a TS can be well
• 1:11:24
  positioned for some of future like applications around there.
• 1:11:29
  But for all intensive purposes like, you know, there what 1
• 1:11:33
  spectrum has slightly better coverage and the other spectrum
• 1:11:36
  has slightly better capacity, but we'll see.
• 1:11:39
  I mean, the other thing I would say is that there, there have
• 1:11:43
  been some interference concerns in the past around Legato, which
• 1:11:46
  is why AST, the Legato spectrum, which is why AST was able to
• 1:11:50
  acquire that spectrum at such a very reasonable price or
• 1:11:54
  actually very low price. That said, low price, meaning
• 1:11:57
  low upfront cost, but then there is a revenue share agreement
• 1:12:00
  with Legato stakeholders. So clearly Legato stakeholders
• 1:12:04
  see tremendous value in the use of the spectrum and the
• 1:12:08
  economics of it. So they're, they're
• 1:12:09
  participating in some of the upside.
• 1:12:11
  But but yeah, originally Legato the, the folks who owned that
• 1:12:16
  spectrum, which is Legato stakeholders, they, they wanted
• 1:12:20
  to try to roll out a terrestrial based wireless service.
• 1:12:23
  And so and there was some concerns around interference.
• 1:12:27
  This originally was intended for mobile satellite service usage.
• 1:12:32
  But but yeah, there was some interference concerns from a
• 1:12:37
  number of of groups that expressed concerns.
• 1:12:40
  And so by AST stepping in and pick up the rights to this to
• 1:12:46
  this spectrum and using it for what was originally intended,
• 1:12:50
  which is satellite terrestrial service.
• 1:12:53
  I think and especially with, you know, the architect architecture
• 1:12:58
  of AST Space mobile satellites, you know, you're able to
• 1:13:02
  basically it's wage and and you know, overcome any of those
• 1:13:06
  interference concerns. I think the value of the
• 1:13:09
  spectrum in the hands of AST Space Mobile is pretty
• 1:13:12
  tremendous. As I've mentioned, you know, I
• 1:13:15
  think work out of the spectrum is following, you know, the
• 1:13:17
  company will tell you in, in their bankruptcy that the
• 1:13:21
  spectrum was worth I think like 33 billion or so.
• 1:13:25
  And that's obviously like full ownership, right?
• 1:13:27
  Like we just have usage rights for eight years.
• 1:13:31
  But you know, I think conservatively that spectrum, if
• 1:13:35
  it's put to proper use, like it's probably worth 15 to 20
• 1:13:38
  billion, right. And AST Space Mobile, who owns
• 1:13:42
  those right? The rights to use the spectrum
• 1:13:44
  for eight years, you know, if you're looking to market cap of
• 1:13:47
  of 13 a half billion. And so actually it's less than
• 1:13:51
  that, sorry, enterprise value 13 a half billion.
• 1:13:55
  So if you buy a sea space mobile today and it, some of the parts
• 1:14:00
  evaluation, you're basically getting, you're getting a lot of
• 1:14:03
  spectrum and then you're getting the rest of the business for
• 1:14:06
  free. Just kind of crazy.
• 1:14:08
  But that, but that's the market, right?
• 1:14:11
  That's how the market perceives things right now.
• 1:14:14
  I guess you could kind of say like 2 months ago, the market
• 1:14:18
  was like, hey, this is great. You got legato spectrum and the
• 1:14:21
  upside of the commercial and defense business.
• 1:14:23
  And so we're going to value, we're going to describe a value
• 1:14:25
  of $660 per share, right? And then today they're saying,
• 1:14:29
  OK, the value of the business is worth lookout now.
• 1:14:32
  So the rest is, is a goose egg, which is, which is quite funny.
• 1:14:37
  You know, I, I joke like if you're a, if you're a deep value
• 1:14:42
  guy or growth at reasonable prices, like you should be
• 1:14:45
  looking at AC space mobile. So anyway, I think I'm going to
• 1:14:49
  pause there. I've been going for, I guess
• 1:14:52
  it's an hour and 15 minutes. That's probably more than you
• 1:14:56
  guys can stand and I'd probably need a break.
• 1:14:58
  But but yeah, I'll, I'll host more of these as we kind of
• 1:15:03
  learn more about how this landscape is changing.
• 1:15:06
  But I think it's important in closing to emphasize that, you
• 1:15:11
  know, last night the the conversation with LON, I think
• 1:15:14
  was quite telling. I think over the long run, he
• 1:15:16
  does want to compete with M and OS.
• 1:15:17
  That's that seems pretty clear. And it makes a lot of sense for
• 1:15:20
  him to I mean, I'm not by the way, I'm not like bagging on
• 1:15:23
  Starlink or Alon. I think it's a great strategy.
• 1:15:26
  He he totally should compete with M and OS Like that's his
• 1:15:30
  end game should be to take and extract as much value from M and
• 1:15:34
  OS as possible, right? And so I think for the people
• 1:15:37
  who are myopic and can't see beyond their nose, like that's
• 1:15:41
  scary for the industry and it's scary for anyone competing.
• 1:15:45
  But I think also you've got to recognize that these MO's are
• 1:15:50
  powerful and they've got, you know what?
• 1:15:53
  T-Mobile is basically the same valuation as as SpaceX, right?
• 1:15:57
  And then that's, yeah, Verizon, amazing tea.
• 1:16:01
  There are no slouches either. And so they are going to go to
• 1:16:05
  war and they're going to be an AC space.
• 1:16:07
  Mobile is the tip of that sphere.
• 1:16:09
  And the amount of enterprise value created from for AST for
• 1:16:16
  itself and also for for wise carriers is going to be
• 1:16:19
  tremendous. And so you know, I think the
• 1:16:21
  risk overall to the industry has been dialed up with this, this
• 1:16:24
  transaction, but also the amount of opportunity for AST has been
• 1:16:28
  nailed up as well. And so that and that's on the
• 1:16:31
  commercial side of the business, right.
• 1:16:32
  Like we're talking wireless, wireless customers, consumer
• 1:16:37
  side. We're not talking about defense
• 1:16:39
  side or government. And you know, like we saw
• 1:16:42
  yesterday, I mean, sometimes people need a reminder.
• 1:16:44
  It's like in the first net presentation, they talk about
• 1:16:47
  how AST space mobile is going to be an important layer to the
• 1:16:50
  first responder network, which I mean, that's a huge business in
• 1:16:54
  of itself, right? So, yeah, I think I think it's
• 1:16:57
  important and This is why I'm doing these calls.
• 1:16:59
  Like it's important for people to stay focused.
• 1:17:02
  There's a lot of noise and yeah, it's exciting and interesting
• 1:17:05
  and, and I guess like also people panic, but it's important
• 1:17:11
  to really think through what the implications are and what it
• 1:17:14
  means. And you know, it has a CS value
• 1:17:17
  or long has it been impacted negatively or is it being
• 1:17:20
  impacted positively? Right.
• 1:17:23
  Has their strategy the the directed device market before it
• 1:17:28
  was viewed as a niche and people poo pooed it, but now all of a
• 1:17:31
  sudden you've got players like Glenn must throwing $17 billion
• 1:17:37
  on spectrum to make it a reality, right And and this that
• 1:17:40
  booth was done after AC space mobile did their legato spectrum
• 1:17:45
  deal, which people were scratching their heads like
• 1:17:47
  well, I don't know why this makes sense and does this make
• 1:17:50
  them, you know, competitive with MN OS?
• 1:17:52
  I thought they were using MNOS spectrum.
• 1:17:54
  It's like, guys, spectrum is valuable.
• 1:17:57
  Like if you can, if you have the technology and the
• 1:18:01
  infrastructure to utilize spectrum and you can do that in
• 1:18:04
  an ACE TS case in partnership with your MN OS, there's going
• 1:18:08
  to be tremendous value created there, right?
• 1:18:10
  And so that should be, that's something that I think for the
• 1:18:15
  people who understood it, you know, part of that move.
• 1:18:18
  And now that in hindsight, it's like, oh, thank God, they did it
• 1:18:20
  like and and now it's like a A, as some people said on Twitter,
• 1:18:28
  the bar has been raised like it's a minimum thrush.
• 1:18:30
  The minimum bet to enter into his market is to own 4050
• 1:18:35
  megahertz of mid band spectrum, right?
• 1:18:38
  That's that's like the ante to play poker.
• 1:18:41
  This is like the this is like the World Series of Poker and to
• 1:18:45
  play and, and it's actually, you know, it's not one guy that's
• 1:18:48
  going to win the whole thing, but there's going to be two to
• 1:18:50
  three winners at the end that they take the entire, they take
• 1:18:54
  the entire, you know, they, they went the entire mount, right.
• 1:18:57
  But in order to play like you don't, you need a chip and you
• 1:19:00
  also need a chair. And that chip happens to be
• 1:19:03
  anywhere between a 10 to $20 billion bet on spectrum.
• 1:19:07
  Just kind of, I mean, going back maybe a year or two years ago,
• 1:19:11
  who would have thought, right? But here we are.
• 1:19:15
  But yeah, I think I think as we kind of learn more, it'll be
• 1:19:19
  interesting to see how things shift around here.
• 1:19:20
  And as the narrative changes, I think the Wall Street analysts
• 1:19:24
  who finally start to get it, I think Barclays, by the way, like
• 1:19:28
  I, I tweeted their report, they get it right.
• 1:19:33
  Do you I was, do you want to compete with someone who is
• 1:19:37
  vertically with you today and will be we want to work with
• 1:19:41
  someone who is going to help facilitate your business and is
• 1:19:44
  doing that in a partnership, which is AST.
• 1:19:47
  So, So yeah, we'll see how things kind of play out.
• 1:19:49
  And I think the market, it's going to take some time to
• 1:19:52
  digest this. And once they do, I think the
• 1:19:54
  value of AC space for bowl will get reflected.
• 1:19:58
  We'll probably see a pretty significant rebound and some
• 1:20:02
  catalysts around the corner, which is launch, right, that the
• 1:20:07
  narrative is going to shift to, oh, the company's launching
• 1:20:09
  satellites and this is real and the constellation can be up in a
• 1:20:12
  few months. And that's, that's like, I think
• 1:20:16
  that's going to kind of slap people back into reality.
• 1:20:20
  And the other, I guess that the last thing I'll close with is
• 1:20:22
  that I think short interest in AST has gone up now it's like at
• 1:20:26
  44 million shares from a low of 33 kind of the beginning of
• 1:20:31
  August. So the ingredients are all
• 1:20:33
  there, man. We're primed like we're ready
• 1:20:35
  that once the launch campaign starts, you've got like all
• 1:20:38
  these hedge fund douchebag Bros shorting the stock because I
• 1:20:43
  think they're smart, but I don't think they fully comprehend
• 1:20:48
  everything. That's, you know, what this
• 1:20:50
  means for the industry. And, and basically like why
• 1:20:53
  ATAST spaceball becomes even more, more of a strategic asset
• 1:20:58
  and draws up closer with M and OS that are not working with
• 1:21:01
  Starlink and hence manufacturers and even the application guys,
• 1:21:05
  right? Microsoft, Google, any number of
• 1:21:07
  folks. But anyway, I'll end it there.
• 1:21:10
  I hope this is helpful and we'll talk again soon.
• 1:21:13
  I'll let this keep running so that doesn't get cut off.
• 1:21:16
  And then, yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll talk again, if not before
• 1:21:21
  Kook's face on Sunday or, you know, sometime thereafter.
• 1:21:24
  But yeah, we'll, we'll see. I think, I think AST, there's a
• 1:21:29
  number of big news items that can drop any day now, and I
• 1:21:34
  think we'll all be surprised. Take care of 1.
• 1:21:41
  Thanks for listening to the AST Space Mobile podcast.
• 1:21:45
  If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the
• 1:21:47
  podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social
• 1:21:51
  media, or leave a rating and review.
• 1:21:53
  To catch all the latest news about AST Space Mobile, make
• 1:21:57
  sure to subscribe. Thanks again and I'll see you
• 1:22:00
  next time. We're doing something very, very
• 1:22:05
  big and I think with this technology we can really affect
• 1:22:08
  billion lives. AFT Space Mobile is the only
• 1:22:11
  company that has proven technology to deliver cellular
• 1:22:15
  broadband connectivity directly from space to the everyday
• 1:22:19
  smartphone. People will just basically turn
• 1:22:22
  their phone and be syndrome, regardless of where you are.
• 1:22:25
  We don't want the user even to know that it's connected by
• 1:22:28
  satellite. Our role is to bring this into
• 1:22:31
  reality, always in partnership with the MMO.