(Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images)
SpaceX’s plan to use its ground network to offer mobile coverage is facing backlash from T-Mobile’s outgoing CFO, who implied that the telecom industry finds the idea laughable.
“It’s not a competitive threat from a wireless perspective, at all,” Peter Osvaldik said when asked about SpaceX’s cellular plans at Citi's 2026 Global TMT Conference on Wednesday.
Osvaldik made the comment a month after SpaceX revealed on an earnings call that it envisions using both satellites and small, low-power cellular base stations for its phone service, Starlink Mobile. “You could put a base station, a cellular base station, on basically the gear that holds a Starlink broadband dish. So you can have kind of these little femtocells around the country,” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said at the time.
Although details were sparse, the femtocells could be deployed in large numbers affordably, enabling Starlink Mobile to offer competitive cellular coverage indoors and in dense urban areas, where satellites struggle to connect. However, Osvaldik is not convinced.
“The latest one, which I think everybody kind of in the know [is] kind of laughing at, is betrayed [by] the fact that there is no strategy there," Osvaldik said. "We estimate you’d need probably over a billion femtocells to have the equivalent outdoor coverage with all the interference problems [and] backhaul problems,” he said. “It’s just not fathomable.”
Osvaldik also argued SpaceX lacks the required radio spectrum to compete with the other major US carriers, even though the company acquired some valuable spectrum from Boost Mobile’s parent, EchoStar. T-Mobile’s CFO also indicated that the actual cost of building a ground network would need to exceed $100 billion.
“Either I’m the worst capital allocator, or this isn’t really going to happen. I’m going to focus over here,” he said, implying that SpaceX isn’t serious about its cellular ambitions.
Industry analysts have also been questioning SpaceX’s femtocell strategy for Starlink Mobile. "This ranks as one of the top three dumbest ideas in my four decades of being in this industry," Earl Lum, the founder of EJL Wireless Research, told Light Reading last month. Lum indicated that femtocells wouldn’t provide sufficient indoor coverage beyond a person’s home.
In a bit of irony, SpaceX partners with T-Mobile to offer the current version of Starlink Mobile, which uses over 600 satellites to provide texting, data for select mobile apps, and even video calls, although bandwidth is constrained. However, T-Mobile has been going out of its way to play down the satellite connectivity, possibly because the next-gen version of Starlink Mobile could become a competitive threat,
To upgrade Starlink Mobile, SpaceX plans to launch a larger constellation of newer satellites designed to deliver 5G performance and download rates up to 150Mbps. In the company’s earnings call last month, Shotwell even signaled the resulting service would be able to lure customers away from the three major US carriers. "I anticipate us to be able to acquire quite a few of their customers because I think our service will be better,” she said.
On Thursday, SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen also pointed out that Starlink Mobile promises to eliminate cellular dead zones and offer global roaming, thanks to the orbiting satellites. "That's pretty magical, especially if you're charging the same or slightly less than a service that doesn't have any of those things," he said at the Goldman Sachs 2026 Communacopia and Technology Conference. "I think that's why the big three operators were a little concerned about us."
Johnsen also indicated the wireless industry has stagnated and been starved of innovation. "In essence, the service you have is largely the same, and I don't remember when 5G was talked about," he added.
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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