CEO of T-Mobile thinks the threat from Starlink has been exaggerated. He questioned the basic premise of the SpaceX pitch

Srini Gopalan, CEO of T-Mobile, said satellite connectivity will stay complementary to terrestrial networks. It will not replace them. "You've got to ask the question of 'What is the gap in the market that they're looking to serve? Why would a customer buy a new cellular service? Where do they go? What's their differentiation? It's clearly not having a broad network." Gopalan focused his pushback on capacity. One satellite covers a large area, and every user in that area shares the same bandwidth. A satellite over a rural county might serve a few hundred people. Put that same satellite over a major city, and millions of people are competing for the same signal. Cities need dense wireless infrastructure for this reason. Thousands of towers and small cells, each serving a small area, stack up to handle millions of simultaneous connections. Gopalan's argument is that satellite technology serves a specific, narrow purpose. It fills dead zones where towers do not exist. It does not compete with what T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T offer in cities, suburbs, and most places where Americans spend most of their time. He pointed to T-Mobile's T-Satellite service, which runs on Starlink. The service reaches rural areas and national parks where T-Mobile does not have towers. Gopalan said it has been useful, but usage came in lower than T-Mobile originally expected. https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/arti…

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u/CynicInRehab 1 7 hours ago

Mostly true.
u/No_Presentation9490 1 7 hours ago

Don't try to take any action on SpaceX either long or short off of fundamentals. Its clear that institutions are turning this into the next liquidity pinata just like Tesla was for the past 10 years
u/guacdoc24 1 7 hours ago

Yup. People will try it for sure but will revert back to
u/shivamp1205 1 7 hours ago

This has been my thought the whole time too. Starlink is addressing coverage in areas that don't provide profit to the bottom line. Competing in dense populations will be difficult.
u/GlowyStuffs 1 6 hours ago

Yeah, it has an amazing level of reach in rural, underserved/sandbagged areas, monopolized areas, wartorn areas, remote destinations, off grid, etc. And due to satellites, hitting most at once. But it won't take over cities or areas with established infrastructure. Just different circles.
u/ThunderBobMajerle 1 6 hours ago

Just depends on cost and ease. I’ll tell you in highly populated areas internet companies are not doing themselves any favors with the limited competition of choices and constant bait and switch on plans. They have shit service and pricing bc they don’t have to worry about you going to another provider. Starlink will change that
u/nemesis24k 1 5 hours ago

Didn't the article cover that this will not be a viable option. Once you have millions of people in a city/ region using satellite there is going to be limitations on the technology supporting it. A few thousands said over a larger area will be totally fine.
u/LongLonMan 1 6 hours ago

This has been very obvious from the start.
u/First-Ad-7960 1 6 hours ago

Legacy providers have a huge build out of in building systems as well.
u/Fibocrypto 1 7 hours ago

I have used Starlink on the ocean ( any mariner on a boat with Starlink today You can make phone calls over a Starlink connection while on the ocean, provided your boat has an active Starlink maritime/mobile-priority data plan and your mobile device is connected to the boat's Starlink Wi-Fi network. Standard land-based Starlink Roam/Residential plans generally do not work or will cut out once you venture past coastal hexagons into designated ocean zones; you need a Mobile Priority or Maritime service plan for offshore use My point is that Starlink already has the ability to compete
u/IvoryTowerResident 1 7 hours ago

i mean what is T-mobile ceo gona say lol. "We are hard losing and stock will go to 0"
u/emp-sup-bry 1 6 hours ago

Doesn’t take away from the core point. Starlink is great in rural areas where there are zero other options. As soon as there are choices, starlink drops to the bottom quickly
u/Fibocrypto 1 6 hours ago

T-Mobile partners with SpaceX's Starlink to provide T-Satellite, a direct-to-cell satellite service that eliminates traditional mobile dead zones. When you are out of range of ground cell towers, your standard smartphone automatically connects to Starlink satellites in orbit to handle texts, emergency 911 messaging, location sharing, and data for select apps. Automatic Connection: Your phone switches to the satellite network (displaying "T-Mobile SpaceX" or "T-Sat+Starlink") only when terrestrial cell and roaming signals are completely gone Special Phone Needed: It works with most modern, unmodified smartphones from major brands like Apple, Samsung, Google, and Motorola.
u/dr3aminc0de 1 7 hours ago

They’re not really competing with anyone there though. That’s one of the few valid reasons to use starlink. On land, particularly urban areas, the value prop is not clear.
u/Scodo810 1 7 hours ago

You kind of just described what he did though, that Starlink fills a need for service in remote areas. Doesn’t really prove out that they can compete or provide a better service in densely populated areas.
u/vulcan_on_earth OP 1 6 hours ago

Good to know it worked (and we all know it does) in scarcely populated zones. You should read the post again.
u/emp-sup-bry 1 6 hours ago

That’s great for all the 18 ocean sailors. I’m happy. Whether it works or not isn’t the point. It’s niche. Niche products have lower ceilings and lower valuations than we see currently. (Until it inevitably becomes a tool for destruction and war, then the money rolllllllls in).
u/munkeymoney 1 5 hours ago

I always look for the downvoted comment because most of the time it's real.
u/Canis_Familiaris 1 7 hours ago

Does satellite still have the issue of disconnecting during thick clouds? If so, itll never replace terrestrial networks, just look at TV. Satellite TV on the whole is way better than cable, but that issue right there keeps me from using satellite
u/averysmallbeing 1 6 hours ago

Lowband is needed for penetration of obstacles like this or vehicles, houses etc. Starlink doesn't have lowband spectrum, nor can their satellites transmit at these frequencies because they are far too small.
u/haneef81 1 6 hours ago

2GHz still has decent propagation properties. Not as lovely as 700MHz low band but also not as challenging as 3.7GHx C-band that operators paid huge sums for. Starlinks latest satellites are no longer small sats under 500kgs. While I don’t subscribe to musks delusions of the total TAM via satellite service, the incremental engineering to make 2GHz antennas isn’t so significant. They can absolutely transmit at 2Ghz today, but for be try limited capacity. People call it 4G like, I think it’s closer to 3G.
u/averysmallbeing 1 6 hours ago

True lowband is an almost order of magnitude improvement when in a car or a vehicle for example. People aren't going to be satisfied with 3G/4G service anymore that they have to stand outside to use. It's no wonder that the T Mobile/Starlink offering had very little uptake.
u/haneef81 1 6 hours ago

Agree but the link budgets can tolerate a 10dB loss on the ground, or else 5G in C-band wouldn’t have proliferated as it has. The bigger issue is that SpaceX need to size up their sats to generate much more power per beam in the satellite. I don’t think the frequencies are necessarily the problem, but they certainly don’t help. Maybe they get there with the v2 D2D but it remains to be seen. I also agree they’ve dramatically overestimated the appeal of 3G/4G remote connectivity. ASTSpaceMobile allegedly has a better solution, but again, remains to be seen. Some demos showcasing broadband video don’t mean much for scale.
u/Scary-Oven8260 1 7 hours ago

This is the new uber. Share price stay sideways for years all because of something musk promised but never delivered
u/reaper527 1 6 hours ago

to be fair, this is a worthless statement. no ceo is going to come out and "oh, we're screwed. this newcomer to our market is going to eat our lunch". it's just like how a company is **always** going to say they aren't going bankrupt even if they are literally in the process of filing for it. it's his job to make statements like this regardless of what reality is. if spacex is a threat to t-mobile or not isn't clear, but his statements aren't going to be worth the few kilobytes that his text takes up.
u/Careless-Age-4290 1 6 hours ago

We had an antivirus vendor and the antivirus company themselves contacted us to say we need a new reseller because ours was going out of business. Called them. They laughed and said that's weird, I don't know what they're talking about that's. Few weeks later, all the licenses went invalid and their phone number stopped working.
u/Xtrepiphany 1 6 hours ago

Elon won't be happy until Starlink satellites are pumping out enough energy to disrupt ecosystems wherever they go.
u/Raylan_Senna 1 6 hours ago

This is just my wild ass guess… but I feel like people are only thinking of phone connectivity when talking about satellites. Elon isnt that short sighted. Every humanoid ai robot and self driving vehicle will need to connect to the internet. Spacex is trying to provide that connection.
u/SkySoul27 1 6 hours ago

Maybe he's not shortsighted but people sure have short term memory. Full self driving next year, every year since 2016. 50k robots by 2026, there's dozens more. How are those visions looking?
u/Raylan_Senna 1 6 hours ago

I hear you. Let’s focus on everything outside of tesla and spacex… do we believe that there will be a massive increase in vehicles, drones, and robots coming in the next 10 years and do we think that cellular networks will be the best method of connection for them worldwide ?
u/teddyKGB- 1 6 hours ago

Wasn't it Mars by 2026 at one point? Lol
u/averysmallbeing 1 6 hours ago

Oh puhlease.
u/laaggynoob 1 5 hours ago

I feel like the OP’s quote is directly relevant here. People won’t be operating autonomous taxis and robots in Siberia. It will be in dense urban and suburban areas where there is a better, more reliable tool for the job.
u/Schumacher713 1 6 hours ago

I love to go offroading and rafting. I lose cell signal often. I don't want cell signal. I have no reason to switch to starlink. I don't see starlink replacing all the carriers.
u/Imaginary-Case3976 1 6 hours ago

Satellite broadband is and always will be a fairy tale story. It’s more useful to storybooks than real life. That’s precisely why Starlink and ASTS won’t become some giant revenue generators. The customer profile is limited and there’s already too much competition in urban areas. Plus, the geopolitics of it too. Some huge countries like China don’t want to give Starlink access to the masses.
u/ThoreauAway46 1 6 hours ago

Right you’ve clearly done your DD. Amazon and Starlink clearly have no idea what they are doing trying to enter a market with minimal TAM. ASTS, the fairy tale story, just guided for close to 1 billion revenue next year. Always baffles me that people think they know more about the size of a market than the people who do that thing for a living.
u/nnguyen496 1 6 hours ago

As someone who is fairly young and literally just switched from ATT to Verizon yesterday, I hope starlink, googlefi, amazon kuiper, or whoever else wants to enter the market push these legacy providers to do better. The switching process was a pain, I tried to switch online but got a message it failed and to go store; why is verizon home and wireless 2 different profiles where I need to create a new profile for my wireless even though I already have one for my home wifi; the business model to have people go in to try and capture more upsell pisses me off to no end; the app sucks; customer service sucks (yes ik this isn’t isolated to phone carriers); and in the year of 2026 living in a high populated area with over 5 million people in my area do I run into dead zones not only for Verizon but also ATT.
u/Fuck_Analysts 1 6 hours ago

good point from the CEO..
u/mancho98 1 6 hours ago

This guy is missing the big picture consider this. Lets say I get a cellphone with SpaceX . Let's say this phone has a plan for 80 dollars that has unlimited internet... Worldwide. As a client of T-Mobile I will leave right there and then. Bye bye. In. A plane over the ocean?
u/vulcan_on_earth OP 1 6 hours ago

Did you read what the CEO said - the current tech is a shared connection. Your ‘unlimited internet’ experience may not work great in NYC but may work great in rural Kansas. Inside a plane (a metal container) … are you sure?
u/BeakersBro 1 6 hours ago

Right now it wouldn't work indoors.
u/Waiting4Reccession 1 6 hours ago

Almost everything space is overvalued and just a massive pump and dump that should never have been allowed to be privatized. Massive waste of our limited resources as well.
u/notconvinced780 1 5 hours ago

Hmm… this sounds like wishful thinking in Gopalan’s part: “Gopalan's argument is that satellite technology serves a specific, narrow purpose. It fills dead zones where towers do not exist. It does not compete with what T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T offer in cities, suburbs, and most places where Americans spend most of their time.” By analogy, this is the reason why cars will never supplant the horse as the mass market preferred mode of transportation. At the time cars were introduced, there weren’t roads optimized for the automobile. There weren’t enough car mechanics. There wasn’t a fully built out gas station infrastructure. Cars weren’t good enough or affordable. Things changed. Ferreira and buggy whip manufacturers have given way to car mechanics and windshield-wiper manufacturers. Gopalan’s presumption that satellite tech won’t improve, increase and support wider higher capacity communications gear seems unlikely. Likewise betting against Musk being able to build out the equivalent of a gas-station infrastructure seems a bold prediction in the post Tesla Supercharger era.
u/camerondtaylor 1 5 hours ago

Elon owns a huge amount of spectrum also. I’m unsure why everyone thinks this will be a satellite only service. Wouldn’t it be hybrid and he would piggyback his spectrum off rented infrastructure?