Latest / AST SpaceMobile Podcast / Kook's Weekly - March 15 - The World Spectrum Classic: AST SpaceMobile vs. The Competition

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Kook's Weekly - March 15 - The World Spectrum Classic: AST SpaceMobile vs. The Competition · AST SpaceMobile Podcast

0:06
This is the AST Space Mobile podcast.
0:10
Where we just basically turn your phone and 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.
0:27
All right. Good evening everyone.
0:28
You know if everyone's watching the World Baseball Classic, but
0:31
that was a pretty awesome high suspense game.
0:33
Go to USA and Speaking of team USAAST space mobile.
0:40
So the global spectrum race is on just like the World Baseball
0:45
classic. We have the World Spectrum
0:48
classic going on right now and ASTS surprised the world and
0:55
they're now struggling to catch up.
0:57
So this week we're going to start off just by looking at FCC
1:00
filing with the famous or infamous, depending on your
1:04
perspective, Catsy commentary. And so you have SpaceX writing a
1:10
letter basically just complaining about ASTS.
1:15
And so Satellite Connect Europe is starting to get real traction
1:21
and SpaceX is trying to draw some inconsistencies saying that
1:26
if ASTS is European based, European sovereign, well then it
1:31
can't be an American company. Well, this is not right.
1:36
But it's also just highlighting the fact that ASTS in a
1:40
commercial gambit has seemingly struck quite a large competitive
1:45
advantage. And this goes to really the
1:48
cartoon for this week is there's three really big moats.
1:53
There's the tech, there's regulatory, and then there's
1:56
business. They compound on each other.
1:59
And so because you have the tech, because you have the
2:02
regulatory savvy approach, your business model can be a
2:08
competitive advantage. And this is what we're seeing
2:10
here is because they had the unique approach to the business
2:14
because it was structured in a way it was very regulatory
2:17
friendly for the Europeans because the tech is so good.
2:22
Then ASTS appears to be in a position to snatch up a lot of
2:26
MSS spectrum. And we think we being, you know,
2:30
the people that stay up all night talking about this thing,
2:32
we think that ASTS is inserting itself into the IRS Squared
2:37
project. There's some other things we
2:39
found that suggested that might be more true than we could have
2:44
ever believed in terms of the types of partners they have.
2:47
And it was in a public filing, but it wasn't obvious the
2:51
company had intended it to be. So I won't mention it here.
2:54
But you can see through some deep due diligence that there's
2:59
multiple European angles and partners extending beyond M and
3:06
OS in terms of how the company is pursuing this.
3:10
And IT, it is exciting because of the pathway to capture more
3:15
spectrum. With that additional spectrum,
3:18
it becomes very exciting because of the commercial and then
3:21
therefore the economic opportunity, which which I think
3:24
is very big. When I go kind of do the back of
3:26
the envelope math, I start to realize that the European
3:30
opportunity can be very, very big and remember what we're
3:34
really solving for here. You know, all jokes aside from
3:38
from the shorts who would mock me for this, But you're trying
3:41
to draw up estimates in a CRAN, not a scalpel.
3:45
It's very difficult to be precise when making a forecast
3:49
for a business like AFC Space Mobile that has so much
3:53
potential but is also so new. What you're trying to figure out
3:57
is revenue going to be $1 billion in 20, thirty $10
4:02
billion, $20 billion, thirty billion, you know, so on and so
4:06
forth. You're trying to figure out
4:09
something within degree of accuracy of base 10, which is
4:14
crazy that we actually really don't know.
4:18
But when you start to dial in some thinking of satellite
4:22
connect Europe, you start to go, well, huh.
4:24
Could this alone be $10 billion opportunity?
4:28
And then things in the US, obviously the military.
4:32
And that's what gets me really excited when I'm really trying
4:34
to draw a line to a trillion dollar market cap, which is
4:39
definitely not a four conclusion.
4:40
It's not a target price, but it's something that I think the
4:44
management team believes. And while a bell can't come out
4:48
and say something, I guess he could come out and say something
4:49
like that, but he it probably won't because he's a
4:51
conservative guy. What you're trying to do, if
4:55
you're playing the game I play, is put yourself in the
5:01
perspective of a founder, put yourself in the perspective of
5:04
someone on the board of directors that's thinking about
5:07
the arc of a company's business prospects over 510 plus years.
5:12
And if you can nail that sort of big long term thinking, the
5:16
stock returns take care of themselves.
5:18
And so some might say, well, kook, what about whether the
5:21
Strait of Hormuz is shut for another three days?
5:24
Yeah, I don't care. That literally has zero bearing
5:28
on my thinking of my analysis of AST space mobile zero and
5:34
perhaps that should be the same for you too.
5:37
That's the difference between short term trading and long term
5:40
investing in my in my view. And so I'm really thinking about
5:45
these things that Katzie puts out.
5:46
And I think that when we look back in a year or two, frankly,
5:51
when we are looking back today at the prior three years, this
5:56
framework of what he said around spectrum will find its its way
6:00
to the most efficient system is so elegant in its first
6:05
principles thinking and gives us a really nice framework by which
6:09
to analyze again these three pillars of that statement tech
6:13
regulatory business. And so I really like the purity
6:16
of Katzie's thinking because it I'm just trying to think of how
6:20
what analog is right for me. To me it really comes down to
6:24
kind of a commodity company that is just structurally a low cost
6:28
producer. And so think of like potash
6:30
company in Canada, I just structurally was the lowest cost
6:33
guy. Think of Saudi Arabia, lowest
6:37
cost producer. I believe these are the types of
6:41
things that accrue massive economic rent overtime and AST
6:47
space mobile, if it is in fact the most efficient system should
6:51
aggregate the most spectrum and spectrum is the asset to quote a
6:58
bell that has a value that nobody can afford.
7:01
It's worth so much. And that's that's a really
7:04
exciting bulk case. As it starts to pan out, the
7:08
MNOCEOS are saying I want it. And so this week, it seems like
7:13
a lifetime ago at this point, but AT&T came out saying
7:16
casually they're going to spend quarter of a trillion dollars to
7:20
advance US connectivity. So there's swinging the bat and
7:24
what was neat is they specifically mentioned AST space
7:27
mobile. And so as Carol Kaziki outline
7:34
for us, this statement is total validation.
7:37
AT&T explicitly named ASTS as their satellite solution.
7:43
No date will be fully integrated with the fiber backbone.
7:48
I again think this is again going to the point of how we
7:53
have something much bigger than we think.
7:58
The simple bear case is we just have dead zone things.
8:07
One SEC might have a cold and just ask my wife if she can wear
8:12
me any anything to drink before I start coughing.
8:16
Last week we talked about the fact that 6G we're trying to put
8:19
more and more together. We're trying to realize that
8:21
ASDS is integral to some of these next generation systems in
8:24
ways that I certainly don't fully understand, but I'm smart
8:28
enough to know when there's a trend appearing.
8:30
And so here we have AT&T stated ASDS will be quote, fully
8:34
integrated with their fiber backbone, pretty important.
8:39
And we just want to see these M and OS really call us out by
8:43
name that is driving this sort of damn the bureaucracy type of
8:50
speed we're seeing with the M and OS.
8:52
If it's coming from the top from ACEO, all of these mid level
8:55
guys are going to pave the way to get stuff done.
8:58
And that's why we're starting to get all these M&O deals done.
9:01
The fact that we had AT&T done was two years, was it a year
9:05
ago, two years ago, a year ago at this point is impressive to
9:08
mobilize their army of lawyers. And then we check in with Doctor
9:13
Mike to again understand why it is that the M and OS care so
9:17
much. And so he went back to some
9:20
earlier work that shows where AT&T was going to be replacing
9:25
the copper carrier of last resort obligations they have
9:29
with satellite. But then also this convergence
9:32
with their overall network. You start to have this double
9:36
headed win for them of we're going to save Cap X meaningfully
9:42
to reallocate capital to the most important things.
9:45
But we're also going to have more efficient revenue, which is
9:47
very, very important because a customer that's already acquired
9:51
that stays IE if you reduce churn, that's the Holy Grail.
9:59
That's what you really want to have if you're an M&O.
10:02
And the belief is and I believe this firmly is that ASTS will
10:08
help lower churn in addition to all the CapEx savings.
10:11
And then we really, I don't truly understand the importance
10:15
to the next generation 6G network, but we're starting to
10:19
realize that it is very important terms of how spectrum
10:22
is reused and utilized and how it brings spectrum to the party
10:29
that currently can't be used via the terrestrial networks.
10:35
So all this relies on our satellites being up in the air.
10:39
And this week we had a sighting of FM one, which is pretty wild,
10:44
true to life UFO sighting. And then a company retweeted it.
10:49
So pretty, pretty cool. It does show the deployed
10:54
payload module, the PLM. So the the ultimate next
10:59
generation design is becoming a little bit certainly a blurry
11:03
image, but more clear we're we're actually seeing.
11:05
It doesn't really tell us anything we didn't know before.
11:09
And then the cells are already active.
11:11
And so while we see the satellite, the cells that are
11:15
being created from the satellites are active.
11:21
So Tanner found a really neat file in that says we have
11:25
deployed and released many fixed cells over the continental US to
11:27
our MNO and OEM partners as reference cells for network
11:31
integration. We continue to test the spectrum
11:33
quality of those fixed cells and received approval to activate
11:35
fixed cells from an MNO. We expect to continue testing
11:39
for space mobile service automation, including beta, beta
11:41
testing prior roll out of initial non continuous space
11:45
mobile service. So it's out there.
11:48
And if you feel a disturbance in the force, you might be walking
11:50
through an AST space mobile beam.
11:54
Pretty cool. Firstnet's coming.
11:58
So Firstnet change their website.
12:00
It's hard to imagine it becoming any more clear than it already
12:03
is. And so first, Firstnet satellite
12:07
with ASD space mobile extend coverage to virtually anywhere
12:10
to maintain connectivity. That is on the first night
12:14
website. They also note push to talk
12:18
surfaces. This is where ASTS was purpose
12:22
built for these use cases. Push to talk is very important.
12:28
If you're racing around as a first responder, you're not
12:30
going to go into speed dial and be dialing people up every time
12:33
you need to communicate. You want to have you know that
12:37
Nextel back in the day type of functionality, they're very
12:40
important. First responders want that.
12:42
That's going to help them use this system maybe as a
12:47
replacement, but certainly as a compliment to things like
12:51
Motorola Solutions, which is pretty decent sized business.
12:55
And the data that was put out with this, we got some
12:58
additional interference data a Catsy went through, which is
13:03
always really cool to see. And we can just see that we have
13:08
an incredible ability to transmit RF signals without
13:14
creating interference. And so as Katzie pointed out, we
13:19
were blasting away and we were nowhere near the maximum allowed
13:25
threshold, not in a single cell. And Starling couldn't manage to
13:30
operate a minimum constellation without exceeding the limit and
13:33
having to ask for a waiver. This is what is going to cause
13:39
breakaway adoption by AST Space Mobile.
13:42
This is what is likely going to cause the breakaway of SATCO
13:50
satellite Connect Europe where the the boundaries become very
13:54
important. So this interference data is
13:58
right there, certainly beyond my initial pay grade to understand
14:02
it, but took the time to really go through it.
14:04
Study Catsy's tweets, use a lot of AI to yet further decipher
14:09
Catsy's tweets. And all of this is in the DD doc
14:13
if you're interested. I tried to write it out as best
14:15
I could in layman's terms, Certainly dense, but it's there.
14:21
And so if you're interested in learning more about it, go to
14:24
the pin tweet and you'll see spectrum, spectrum sections and
14:28
a lot of it's covered in the technology section, which is
14:31
certainly interesting stuff that I really hadn't known about
14:34
before. So now we get back to the
14:36
network of the future. So again, I think this is the
14:39
thing that we don't probably understand fully enough.
14:42
And so back with Catsy, of course, we have him talking
14:46
about advanced delay and Doppler waveforms, lots of very big
14:50
words. And then really the implications
14:53
of this for 6th generation next terrestrial networks.
14:56
NTN and so he has a lot of cool tweets and it really shows where
15:03
the spectrum reuse and the technology brought to bear by
15:07
AST space mobile is what can enable this but it is hard
15:12
because the Leo satellites if if people you know the example of
15:17
Doppler. If anyone forgets it from high
15:20
school is when an ambulance is racing toward you and then goes
15:25
past you. That's where you get the change
15:28
in the siren, and that's the Doppler effect is the speed
15:34
shift of the sound. And so the same effect happens
15:38
with RF signals, especially when you're cruising along at a
15:41
casual 17,000 miles an hour. And so the math required to
15:46
compensate for that is computationally intensive and
15:50
requires a lot of technology. And that's where Katzie makes
15:54
their observation that ASTS has such a big advantage.
15:57
And so as we go to 6G, the complexity of making all of this
16:01
work skyrockets. Starlink, being the closed
16:05
architecture people that they are, has all that processing on
16:08
board. ASTS has it down on Earth, which
16:15
Katzie's perspective is that it's very difficult to
16:19
coordinate all this complexity in orbit on a closed system.
16:22
Whereas having the bent pipe architecture, which ASTS uses,
16:27
it's reflecting the raw signal down to a terrestrial processing
16:31
mode. And so that is the easier, more
16:37
scalable, upgradable way to handle this and be more
16:41
relevant. It also has these side benefits
16:45
like we've talked about in the past of data sovereignty and
16:48
things like that. That's what ends up being so
16:50
important to the M and OS because it means you're not
16:52
losing control of the data, which is very important when
16:55
you're thinking about all these European countries, which are
16:58
numerous and many, and not wanting to have all the data
17:02
being shot over to the United States of America or in control.
17:06
Being controlled by the United States of America, and
17:08
especially being controlled by SpaceX.
17:10
But then we go to how this also interplays with legato.
17:15
So the legato spectrum is gold, in my view.
17:19
Very, very valuable stuff and Kathy does a nice job reminding
17:23
us all of why that is. And so where the legato spectrum
17:27
lies in the sort of spectrum pancake, you have a comparison
17:33
of it against where Global Star sits and Iridium sits.
17:36
But very importantly, where all of those things sit next to the
17:39
GPS spectrum where you really can't mess with that.
17:44
Otherwise, planes fall out of the air, for example, and so you
17:48
are not allowed to spam anywhere near the GPS signal.
17:52
GPS is very faint, so it's very sensitive if you start blasting
17:56
with high power. And this was the original
17:59
problem that Legato had. Now AST Space Mobile, with its
18:02
incredibly powerful beamforming technology, is capable of
18:07
working in those bands without spamming GPS because it has this
18:12
very powerful but very directed beam.
18:15
It doesn't have these shoulders. And so if you go into the DD
18:18
dock, you're going to see things that look really like a
18:22
rectangle where there's this this plateau, and then it falls
18:26
off. That's good.
18:27
Because if they were shoulders instead of the rectangle, those
18:31
shoulders are emissions that are getting in adjacent spectrum
18:37
bands. And that's bad.
18:38
It muddles the signals. So Katzie goes through and notes
18:42
his opinion that Global Global Star can't work at all.
18:46
Iridium is very difficult because it's closer and you'd
18:49
need really good filters and we can do it.
18:55
So the top tier technology that we have means that we can use
19:01
this spectrum where no one else could.
19:03
And going back to the the title cartoon, if you will, the
19:08
spectrum that no one else could use the way we could use it
19:11
ended up Abracadabra, owned by us.
19:14
Spectrum flows to the most efficient system.
19:17
Very exciting stuff. So we are now also waiting for
19:22
SES approval. This week showed some
19:25
interesting little tidbits where Verizon withdrew.
19:29
Now here's my drink coming. Thank you very much.
19:36
Oh, actually, we might have a brief intermission.
19:39
One second. Let me just put this on mute
19:41
real quick. Everyone's in for a surprise.
19:50
We have a a brief message from our our sponsor.
19:54
AST Space Mobile's the best. You guys should all get it if
19:58
you don't, Yeah, you should get it.
20:01
Thank you for that paid programming.
20:03
OK, I'll go to that. OK.
20:08
My daughter been working on her own AST Space Mobile
20:11
advertisement and looks like she kind of choked at the at the at
20:17
the moment of. She when she saw all the emojis,
20:20
I think that's what she got stage right.
20:22
Maybe next week she'll she'll do her space mobile impersonation.
20:25
But anyway, we are back to SES approval.
20:29
And so Verizon withdrew their petition to deny AST space
20:33
mobile awkward. So obviously they no longer
20:38
really have a petition to deny, but they're cleaning up the
20:40
docket, which makes sense. So Verizon, you know, this is
20:44
cool. Alfred Mertz did the time
20:47
series. So thanks for thanks for this.
20:50
In November 2020, Verizon files a petition to deny AST.
20:53
In 2024, they sign an MOU. In 2025, they sign ADA.
20:59
And then now they are removing the petition to deny.
21:03
Clearly they've changed their view on AST space Mobile when it
21:06
was a threat to them competitively because they were
21:09
not involved with it. And now they're aligned with it.
21:11
And so the again, the incredible partnership between AT&T and
21:17
Verizon that a few would have predicted five years ago, this
21:22
type of filing cleanup to me smells like SES approval is
21:25
coming. And so I know Justin is on the
21:28
case. Our our FCC scout is working
21:31
overtime so that when that filing hits, which we think
21:33
could be any day that we'll all see it and Yolo a bunch of
21:38
calls. And that is just one of many
21:41
things that are cooking right now and a drink of water.
21:48
And Pan Man did a space shocker this week going over all the
21:53
things that are exciting. And so he talked about Firstnet
21:56
Japan joining Golden Dome, which we'll get to, the Starling not
22:01
being great and things like that.
22:04
And so he covered this, really kind of covered my own spaces
22:08
before me and is probably worth listening to.
22:11
I didn't listen to it, but it's there if you want to hear what
22:14
he had to say. And then what I always like to
22:17
hear is what SpaceX has to say about us when it's positive.
22:21
And so there was a Teegas call which I had missed even though I
22:25
subscribed to Teegas and SpaceX, a former product manager at
22:30
SpaceX said, quote, I know there's ASD Space Mobile who are
22:33
gearing up to do some interesting things as well on
22:36
the direct to sell side and the training side, etcetera.
22:39
So this was in the context of AI inference pretty cool if SpaceX
22:48
is saying ASTS is about to do some really cool things on the
22:53
AI side. So we'll stay tuned for that.
22:56
But meanwhile, while we wait for AI, which I believe is coming,
23:00
we have Golden Dome continuing to progress.
23:04
And so this is something that I am enormously excited about.
23:07
I, I think, you know, I hope springs eternal.
23:11
I get it. But like, I, I still think that
23:13
ASDS is going to be revealed to be one of the integral backbones
23:16
of the system. And I think it will be our
23:20
moment. Golden Dome keeps getting
23:23
bigger. And so Japan is joining Iran.
23:27
The Iran conflict will probably turn out to be just yet another
23:31
advertisement for US weapon system capabilities.
23:35
And the importance of Golden Dome seems obvious right now.
23:39
And so the ability to track and take custody, in other words, to
23:46
continue to track threats that are being aimed at your airspace
23:51
would appear to be a bull market.
23:54
And then how you destroy those things is ever changing.
23:56
So, you know, obviously the the current system we have is very
24:00
expensive and there's lots of things everyone can read on that
24:03
and the Wall Street Journal every day.
24:04
And Ukraine has different techniques and even loves
24:06
lasers. But at the end of the day, you
24:08
got to see what's coming and then you have to move all that
24:12
data around so that then you can have some sort of kill
24:16
capability against it. And I believe that ASTS is going
24:20
to be in that tracking and custody and transport layer.
24:26
And those are some pretty big markets and more countries are
24:30
joining, which is just more and more opportunity for this.
24:34
But then we also just have the continued observations around
24:37
the shortfalls of the GPS system.
24:40
And I was fascinated to read more about Andoro this week.
24:44
And so they're, you know, really learned some hard lessons in
24:46
Ukraine and made their systems not even use GPS anymore just so
24:50
that they weren't subject to US jamming.
24:54
But Iran apparently switched from GPS guided weapons to the
24:58
Chinese network, etcetera, which is ironic.
25:02
If I ran with launching weapons using the USG PS: system.
25:05
It's like, thanks for nothing guys.
25:07
But the electronic warfare is very clearly front and center of
25:13
this modern conflict. And I again believe that ASTS is
25:18
also front and center of where the puck is going.
25:21
So we have to watch these developments very carefully and
25:27
try to get an understanding of not if, but in my view when and
25:33
then really understanding the magnitude of it.
25:38
The magnitude is a question we can ask around many markets.
25:45
And so the analog we've talked about a lot and this is where we
25:51
have only 6 inches again posting a TIGAS account, which is, which
25:54
is neat. We have the T-Mobile US A/C EO
25:57
saying that they really think of the DD to C category as an
26:04
insurance product and which is what my view was as well.
26:09
Insurance is something that you hope not to use.
26:12
So the frequency of needing it is low, but when you do need it,
26:17
the magnitude is high. And for that, you're willing to
26:20
bleed out premium to protect against your downside.
26:25
And so the fear of lost connectivity when you most need
26:28
it, in my view, is going to drive adoption because you just
26:32
don't want to take the bet. And it depends on the pricing.
26:36
And there's going to be a lot of tears, I believe, of the
26:38
service. And there's a lot to learn of
26:41
how they do it. But having that early insight
26:45
from T-Mobile, even with the crappy service that they
26:48
launched is, is pretty useful. And I'm going to skip one tweet
26:53
ahead because it makes more sense now that I'm reading it.
26:56
But we have the price discovery coming out on this sort of each
27:02
day. And so one New Zealand is coming
27:05
out showing that it's going to be $20.00 a month.
27:08
I'm assuming this is in New Zealand dollars.
27:10
So that's going to be more like 12 to 15 USA month.
27:16
But then there's that's for satellite data.
27:18
And then there's going to be satellite taxed, which is going
27:20
to be 5 New Zealand a month, pretty big numbers for a pretty
27:26
basic service. And that's setting some
27:29
expectations for us on where a premium broadband service should
27:34
stack out. But then the Tam is always just
27:36
something that I think evolves. And I've talked many a time
27:39
about Asts as a platform where it's very difficult in life to
27:44
write all the problem statements because people have different
27:47
lived experiences. And I know the ways in which I
27:50
would use a service like this are usually pretty kooky but
27:53
important to me. And they're very different from
27:56
probably how a lot of other people would use it.
27:57
So look no further. We have guys on snowmobiles
28:01
rigging up Starlinks to get connectivity in the middle of
28:05
Montana. And Starlink retweeted this.
28:09
Just showing that you can get fast, reliable Internet even in
28:12
the most extreme and remote locations.
28:14
Well, OK, Hooking up a satellite dish to your snowmobiles, taking
28:18
up some valuable real estate. It's a lot of equipment and you
28:21
got to have power. And so when you start to get
28:26
this just on your basic phone, that's going to be better.
28:30
And there's some need. State sufficiently large that
28:34
Starling felt compelled to show that to the world to give other
28:38
people ideas on how they too could benefit from a
28:40
connectivity. This is the type of market to
28:44
that I would point out where even though it's niche, although
28:47
I say that and whenever I go visit some people in the in the
28:54
winter, everyone's snowmobiling. So it's not not small of a
28:57
market. These are high value markets
29:01
because these are for enthusiasts.
29:02
They're trying to solve a very important problem statement that
29:05
they have. And that's where these tiered
29:08
packages where you start to segment your demand could end up
29:12
being pretty interesting as ASTS starts to roll out the service
29:15
with limited capacity. One SEC, the space SpaceX IPO
29:26
continues to just seem to snowball on itself like a
29:30
snowmobile falling off a mountain.
29:32
And so not only is their IPO going to be massive, but now
29:38
looks like they're going to get a hack to get into the S&P
29:41
earlier than expected, which is pretty neat.
29:43
So I'm just going to meet real quick, like off.
29:52
It was a long night camping last night where none of us could
29:55
sleep yet none of us wanted to do anything because we don't
30:01
want to wake up the other guys even though we're all awake.
30:02
And now I'm definitely way out. Way worse for wear.
30:06
We also had the bear thesis come out and I posted it just because
30:11
these guys are insufferable and you can read it for yourself
30:15
from Stewart, sorry, from Stuart Lucky or Lucky Stewart or
30:24
whatever he calls himself. But the more interesting thing
30:27
is this commentary from who was this, Virgin Media O2?
30:34
So we have one of Spacex's partners come out saying that
30:39
their beams only have 4 megabits per second.
30:42
Well, we have beams 30 times larger at 120 megabits per beam.
30:52
And now the important thing to understand or how these beams
30:54
work is that you share a beam with the other users.
30:57
And so in rural areas, that 4 megabits per second is shared
31:03
among a few people. In an urban area, it's shared
31:06
among many people. So then that speed starts to get
31:09
kind of unusable, which is the point that the Virgin Media guy
31:11
was saying. What also matters is how many
31:16
beams you can create and how small those beams are.
31:18
AST is capable of creating many beams, I believe 2800 and they
31:23
are very tight and they don't have the diameter off the top of
31:27
my head. But Starlink's does not have
31:31
many and they're large, which means you have to share them
31:33
among many people, which starts to degrade what you can do in
31:37
that beam and starts to why is he put?
31:42
So there's service limitations and it really just kind of works
31:46
in dead zones because in dead zones you have presumably fewer
31:50
people because it's going to be rural area, rural areas.
31:53
But then you start to not really solve the network problem of the
31:56
future that I believe ASTS is poised to do.
32:01
So that's why I think that there's going to be this divide
32:04
between the true infrastructure of the network of the future
32:09
versus sort of like a hacked together dead spot solution.
32:14
And we have Kevin actually meant to watch this whole interview
32:19
and I forgot, but we have Kevin out also finding some more
32:23
detailed information on exactly what I just talked about, where
32:28
the SpaceX satellites do 40 beams and each can generate 4
32:33
megabits per second of data and shared on this big space.
32:39
And again, the ASTS is able to do 120 megabits in its beam and
32:45
generate way more beams. It's going to be all constrained
32:49
by the processing capacity of the satellite.
32:52
And so even though it's capable satellite ASES, capable of
32:56
producing, I believe again 2800 beams, you're not going to fire
32:59
all those at the same time because you're going to be
33:01
bandwidth processing constrained at the satellite level.
33:05
And that's where things like the ASIC come into play, where you
33:07
can just have more bandwidth processing capacity.
33:11
I've always thought about that is really the critical path
33:13
item, which is a proxy in itself or power generation.
33:20
So the weird trend is first you had Deutsche Telekom saying that
33:27
basically SpaceX sucks, and now you have O2 saying kind of the
33:34
same thing. It's almost like the people who
33:36
signed up for the system are arriving at the same conclusion
33:41
and now looking over to see what the other guys can bring to the
33:44
table. As much as people always thought
33:49
that there's this going to be this big defection event to
33:53
SpaceX, it's starting to look like it will go the other way.
33:58
And imagine the shock to the market if ASTS not only delivers
34:05
what they said they were going to do, which we all believe is
34:07
good for some crazy stock price. What happens if SpaceX falls on
34:12
the sword and it looks like you're really not even going to
34:16
have that strong of a #2 competitor because you start to
34:20
have SpaceX customer start to multi client with AST space
34:24
mobile. Think about what happens if that
34:27
comes to pass and it's starting to look like it could be a
34:29
possibility. Not a foregone conclusion, but
34:31
starting to look like it could be a possibility.
34:35
And it goes back to the first principles by which this system
34:38
was built. And so it's again go back to
34:40
Kevin Chen and Orange. Orange shouts out their
34:44
partnership and says it's an Orange managed core network.
34:50
And we've heard in the past, I think it was Telstra in
34:53
Australia really complaining about what it's like to work
34:56
with Starlink because it's Starlink manage core network.
35:00
You're having to integrate two different networks, which is a
35:02
beast and annoying versus a first principled approach which
35:08
allows the M and OS to retain control.
35:11
So those first principles I think are going to be the real
35:13
key difference makers of who wins and who loses.
35:16
And then you're also starting to see some early signs of the
35:20
frustration of vendor lock in. And so Starlink closed system is
35:27
facing backlash as farmers are having their prices doubled on
35:33
them. What assholes.
35:35
And so all these guys wired up their John Deere tractors
35:41
needing massive amounts of data as they go through and have
35:45
these autonomous combines and then all of a sudden they get re
35:51
rated from $150.00 a month to $500 a month on the commercial
35:55
tier. Classic Elon.
35:59
Get you on the hook, give you no alternative, crush you on the
36:03
price. And then we also have pilots
36:08
worried about the same thing. I thought it had that link,
36:13
Maybe I lost it, but there was another article about pilots
36:15
complaining about that as well. And so people are going to see
36:23
this trend. And that's why the MN OS want a
36:25
standards based solution with someone that's less predatory.
36:30
And the ironic part is SpaceX actually needs the help of
36:37
others to pursue its gambit. And so right now it can work on
36:41
the borrowed spectrum of its partners, but as it seeks to
36:44
implement the Echostar spectrum, it needs the chip manufacturers
36:50
and the modem makers to integrate those radio, radio
36:52
frequencies. Current phones don't support
36:56
them. And so it will be really
36:58
interesting to see how that goes down.
37:00
Right now, SpaceX is locked out of the garden and reason would
37:05
stay on that they will get integrated, but just how quickly
37:08
and how cooperative are those players going to be at letting
37:13
the wolf into the hen house? And then you also just have
37:18
governments continuing to crack down.
37:20
And so Kenya is reviewing the Starling partnership because of
37:26
interference issues. So more of the same.
37:29
The regulator wants to assess the impact of the deals
37:32
interference with mobile phone networks.
37:35
So rest assured, you can imagine the M and OS are going to be
37:40
rightfully upset but extra loud because of the threat that
37:46
SpaceX poses when they enter their market.
37:49
And you can see if you look at the DD doc and you look at what
37:52
Katzie posted just said this weekly thread, you can see what
37:55
the interference issues are on the comparative adjacent channel
37:59
leakage radio ratio charts. And basically just goes to
38:03
whether your beam looks like a big rectangle with a sharp drop
38:07
off on the shoulders or whether it has these broad sweeping sort
38:12
of like Mount Kilimanaro type angles.
38:15
And that means that across spectrum, not yours, you're
38:19
interfering and that is bad. So kind of a slow week this
38:23
week. But even on a slow week, after
38:26
all the stuff we got in the preceding 2 weeks, there's still
38:32
some good positive movement. We still continue to see this
38:37
chasm and the competitive landscape.
38:40
We're seeing our biggest partners dial us into some of
38:43
their biggest plans. We're literally seeing the
38:46
satellite and we're having some clues drop in the regulatory
38:51
dockets that show that we're inching ahead.
38:55
And on any given day, we might expect our SES approval and it's
39:00
very possible this week, certainly by next week, we're
39:04
going to have some more visibility on the FM 2 launch
39:06
because we're going to have New Glen 3 hot fire or do it static
39:10
fire. And then once you're assuming
39:14
that successful, then they'll be able to solidify a launch date,
39:17
which will be the beginning of hopefully faster go forward
39:22
cadence of more launches. Because now what we've learned
39:25
is that one of the critical path items was getting the stacking
39:30
engineering. So basically how the satellites
39:32
stack on top of each other, getting that certified and down
39:37
pat. There's a lot of weight when
39:39
you're starting to stack stack 6 to 8 of these satellites.
39:42
So it's always something as you're doing this for the first
39:44
time. But once you knock it out, then
39:50
it's not a delay in the future. And that's always important.
39:53
We seem to be moving at a increasingly fast rate in the
39:58
right direction. So thank you everyone for
40:00
joining me. I will talk to everyone next
40:03
week. Thanks for listening to the AST
40:07
Space Mobile podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and
40:10
you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with
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others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and.
40:16
Review to catch all the. Latest news about AST Space
40:20
Mobile, make sure to subscribe. Thanks again and I'll see you
40:24
next time. We're doing something very, very
40:29
big and I think with this technology we can really affect
40:32
billion lives. AFT Space globally is the only
40:35
company that has good technology to deliver several broadband
40:40
connectivity directly from state to do everyday smartphone.
40:44
People will just basically turn their phone and be seamless
40:48
regardless of where you are. We don't want the user even to
40:51
know that it's connected by satellite.