The Supply Chain: Chips, Antennas and Launch
What components and suppliers does direct-to-device depend on, and where are the bottlenecks?
Chapter summary
D2D depends on five links: phone chipsets that support satellite modes and bands; very large deployable antennas on satellites; radio-frequency electronics and onboard processors that form thousands of beams; launch capacity; and ground stations with fibre connections into operators' core networks.
Key takeaways
- 1
The tightest constraints in 2026–2028 are launch for large satellites (Starship for SpaceX's next generation; Falcon 9, New Glenn and Indian launchers for AST), phone support for new bands, and, for European and other non-US projects, access to space-qualified components outside US export controls.
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