(Credit: US Mobile)
UPDATE 9/2: US Mobile's CEO Ahmed Khattak is retracting his plan to offer AST SpaceMobile as a satellite service for phones by Q4.
"I had understood us to be targeting Q4, but there are still a number of technical, commercial and product dependencies that need to play out before we can put a launch date on it," he wrote in his updated Reddit post. "Given some of the press coverage has already attributed the Q4 timing to me, I wanted to correct this directly rather than let it sit out there."
The "technical, commercial and product dependencies" likely refer to AST's delays in launching the required 45 satellites to offer continuous service. Peter Adderton, the CEO of MobileX, another MVNO, expressed his skepticism that US Mobile could offer AST's satellite service by the end of this year. "If you believe all of this, I’ve got a bridge to sell you," he said in a tweet on Monday.
Original story:
As SpaceX’s Starlink Mobile and AST SpaceMobile compete in satellite connectivity for phones, one prepaid carrier in the US sees an opportunity to offer both services to its customers.
The CEO of US Mobile, Ahmed Khattak, mentioned the upcoming satellite connectivity push in a Reddit post on Saturday while talking up the carrier’s future plans. It comes a few months after US Mobile partnered with SpaceX to sell the dish-based Starlink through new bundles.
With over 1.1 million subscribers, US Mobile operates as a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO), meaning it resells cellular access from the big three carriers. Khattak’s post signals that his company plans to do the same with emerging satellite-to-phone services.
“On direct-to-cell specifically, AST SpaceMobile is coming to Warp and is currently slated for Q4,” he wrote, referring to US Mobile’s Warp plan, which leases network capacity from Verizon.
“We are also targeting Starlink Direct to Cell toward the end of Q4,” Khattak added. The goal is to use satellite services to extend coverage into dead zones, giving customers a way to stay connected in areas far from traditional cell towers. “I do not think satellite will replace terrestrial cellular networks because the physics simply do not support that, but I think it is going to be an incredible coverage layer,” he noted.
Khattak’s post is a bit surprising, considering AST SpaceMobile has delayed the launch of commercial service using 45 satellites from late 2026 to early next year. AST already counts AT&T and Verizon as major partners and investors and aims to offer data speeds of 150Mbps or higher. But the problem is that AST has only 13 satellites in orbit at the moment—not enough to provide 24/7 coverage.
So far, US Mobile hasn’t responded to a request for comment. But Khattak’s post suggests the prepaid carrier might try to offer a beta service using AST SpaceMobile focused on intermittent connectivity.
In the meantime, Starlink Mobile already offers exclusively through T-Mobile as T-Satellite. But eventually, SpaceX will expand it to Boost Mobile as part of EchoStar’s deal to sell radio spectrum to the Elon Musk-led company.
It now looks like US Mobile will become a provider of Starlink Mobile, too. The satellite network can power text messaging and mobile data for select apps, including video calls over WhatsApp, but bandwidth remains constrained at about 4Mbps.
That said, over the long-term SpaceX has hinted it’ll eventually use a next-generation 5G version of Starlink Mobile to directly compete with AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon. Meanwhile, the traditional carriers are setting up a joint venture that looks poised to foster competition in satellite-to-phone services, providing a potential boon to AST and other rivals, including Amazon-Globalstar.
About Our Expert
I've been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I'm currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country's technology sector.
Since 2020, I've covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I've combed through FCC filings for the latest news and driven to remote corners of California to test Starlink's cellular service.
I also cover cyber threats, from ransomware gangs to the emergence of AI-based malware. In 2024 and 2025, the FTC forced Avast to pay consumers $16.5 million for secretly harvesting and selling their personal information to third-party clients, as revealed in my joint investigation with Motherboard.
I also cover the PC graphics card market. Pandemic-era shortages led me to camp out in front of a Best Buy to get an RTX 3000. I'm now following how the AI-driven memory shortage is impacting the entire consumer electronics market. I'm always eager to learn more, so please jump in the comments with feedback and send me tips.
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