The three top mobile carriers in the U.S. are joining together in a new joint venture aimed at simplifying providing direct-to-device (D2D) services to their customers. AT&T<\/b>, T-Mobile<\/b>, and Verizon <\/b>announced the move Thursday to form a new JV that would pool spectrum resources and take a unified approach to D2D services. <\/p>\n
The three MNOs said the JV will make joint investment in using satellite-based D2D technologies to address coverage gaps, bring together IP and terrestrial spectrum, and create industry specifications.<\/p>\n
The MNOs said the JV will enable more competition, saying \u201cmore satellite service providers will gain opportunities to compete, invest, and grow.\u201d <\/p>\n
Satellite D2D providers AST SpaceMobile<\/b> and Skylo<\/b> were optimistic about the announcement, and one analyst pointed to the importance of the MNOs targeting spectrum pooling and standardization. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, SpaceX<\/strong> execs seemed to take the news as a challenge.<\/p>\n All three of the carriers have already taken different approaches to working with satellite players for D2D. T-Mobile offers service with SpaceX; AT&T is set to offer service with AST Spacemobile; Verizon offers service on some Android phones with Skylo and has a commercial agreement with AST SpaceMobile as well. <\/p>\n \u201cWith the expansion of satellite constellations, soon to be supported by multiple space-based operators, this JV will use expanded capacity and improved performance to deliver the best possible service to customers. This partnership will also make it easier for satellite operators to deliver a broader range of direct-to-device experiences and help accelerate innovation across the wireless and satellite industries,\u201d T-Mobile President and CEO Srini Gopalan said in a statement. <\/p>\n The MNOs said that existing carrier-satellite agreements will remain in place and the partners can continue connectivity efforts independently.<\/p>\n \u201cThis partnership gives customers more options, continues to strengthen America\u2019s infrastructure and increases competition for satellite providers,\u201d Verizon CEO Dan Schulman said in a statement.<\/p>\n This push to work with multiple satellite operators comes as the FCC this week approved EchoStar\u2019s spectrum sale to SpaceX, which will unlock new capabilities for future versions of SpaceX\u2019s Direct-to-Cell constellation. Amazon has moved to secure mobile satellite services (MSS) spectrum of its own, entering the D2D market with a deal to buy Globalstar. <\/p>\n SpaceX execs seemed to take the news as a challenge, with President and COO Gwynne Shotwell posting \u201cI guess Starlink Mobile is doing something right! It\u2019s David and Goliath (X3) all over again \u2014 I\u2019m bettin\u2019 on David.\u201d<\/p>\n SpaceX VP of Satellite Policy David Goldman replying that\u2019 he\u2019d \u201ctake that bet,\u201d while pointing to an analysis that questioned whether the Department of Justice will allow the three major carriers carriers to partner in this way.<\/p>\n Both Skylo and AST SpaceMobile who work with the MNOs had positive responses to the JV. <\/p>\n \u201cAny move that gives operators a stronger voice in that future should be welcomed. Satellite should strengthen the mobile ecosystem, not fragment it,\u201d commented Skylo CEO and co-founder Parth Trivedi said in a statement. <\/p>\n \u201cThe real significance is that telcos are recognizing the strategic value they already bring to the satellite ecosystem: spectrum, subscribers, roaming, service quality, billing, trust and customer experience. Those assets will be essential if direct-to-device connectivity is going to scale beyond the successful early services we\u2019ve seen, and become part of everyday mobile life,\u201d Trivedi said. <\/p>\n AST SpaceMobile CEO and Chairman Abel Avellan also applauded the move as well. <\/p>\n \u201cAST SpaceMobile is happy to see how the industry is preparing to enable space-based cellular broadband connectivity to every American,\u201d Avellan said. \u201cWe plan to be a key enabler of this transformation as we continue to grow our global network in Low-Earth Orbit and expand available spectrum to our network.\u201d<\/p>\n Joe Madden, a mobile industry analyst with Mobile Experts, told Via Satellite<\/i> the move to form a JV was a bit surprising from the MNOs because they all have separate satellite agreements in place. Madden said the keys to the joint venture are pooling spectrum and collaborating on specifications. <\/p>\n \u201cThese three companies all want a \u2018more seamless experience,\u2019 meaning that the ability to hand over from cellular to satellite networks will be useful, and that kind of standardization requires economy of scale and cooperation between competitors,\u201d Madden said. <\/p>\n He also sees implications for Verizon and AT&T\u2019s work with AST SpaceMobile Both MNOs are both working with and providing spectrum AST SpaceMobile, and each operator owns the rights to 850 MHz spectrum in different regions of the country. <\/p>\n \u201cThis joint venture is a more formalized agreement between AT&T and Verizon which will help to keep that band straight and will allow each company to monetize the D2D service appropriately,\u201d Madden said. <\/p>\n This story was updated after SpaceX leadership responded to the news<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The three top mobile carriers in the U.S. are joining together in a new joint venture aimed at simplifying providing direct-to-device (D2D) services to their customers. AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon announced the move Thursday to form a new JV that would pool spectrum resources and take a unified approach to D2D services. The three MNOs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46983,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46982"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Satellite Players and Analyst Respond <\/b><\/h3>\n