What Direct-to-Device Spectrum Is Worth
What have companies paid for spectrum that can serve phones from space, and how does that compare with terrestrial mobile spectrum?
Chapter summary
D2D has given satellite spectrum a price tag comparable with mobile spectrum.
Key takeaways
- 1
SpaceX's purchase of about 65 MHz from EchoStar for about $17 billion works out at roughly $0.8 per megahertz per person covered (MHz-pop) in the United States; AT&T's purchase of about 50 MHz of terrestrial spectrum from EchoStar for about $23 billion works out at roughly $1.4 per MHz-pop (Setcoin calculations).
- 2
Amazon's ~$11.6 billion for Globalstar buys a company whose main assets are global MSS spectrum and the Apple relationship.
- 3
These prices imply that the market expects D2D to earn several billion dollars a year by the 2030s, or that spectrum owners value control of a scarce input regardless of near-term revenue.
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