SpaceX posing a threat to the leading mobile carriers' market share isn't going to happen anytime soon — if you believe Verizon CEO Dan Schulman.
On an earnings call Monday, Schulman predicted SpaceX will need US$300 billion to $500 billion to fully build out its Starlink Mobile U.S. carrier network, including cell sites and the infrastructure connecting them.
"They're going to look at 65,000 to 80,000 macro sites," he said on the call. "They're going to need backhaul, RAN, and a tremendous amount of spectrum. It's going to take a minimum of four to six years to fully build that out."
"Then they need to build retail, customer service, back-office systems, et cetera," he continued. "All of that gets them basically the same network and same capabilities and same cost structure as what we have today."
"Then sometime over the next four to six years, they have the possibility of becoming the sixth, not the fourth, the sixth competitor in the market," he added.
In a curt reply on X, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote, "Will take 2 or 3 years."
"In my view, Verizon is right that building a carrier is a massive undertaking, but I would treat its $500 billion estimate as an incumbent's worst case, not a proven price tag," observed Mark N. Vena, president and principal analyst at SmartTech Research , a technology advisory firm in Las Vegas.
"The final bill depends on what SpaceX builds, what it leases, and how much it relies on partners," he told TechNewsWorld.
He added that Musk's prediction of two to three years sounded "absolutely plausible for launching a meaningful competitive service, especially if SpaceX secures tower leases and spectrum quickly."
However, he acknowledged that matching the coverage, capacity, indoor performance and customer support of established carriers nationwide is a much taller order.
Without ground-based infrastructure, shared satellite capacity and obstructed views of the sky would limit network performance, explained Andrey Meshcheryakov, head of practice at Recombinators , a strategy and innovation consulting firm in Morristown, N.J. "But a sufficiently developed hybrid network could compete," he told TechNewsWorld.
"SpaceX's direct-to-device ambitions offer substantial near-term value in rural connectivity and disaster resilience," he added, "although closing coverage gaps is a different achievement from matching everyday urban mobile service."
Ram Chandra Sachan, a network and security architect for a multinational information technology services provider in Bengaluru, India, explained that Verizon's timeline estimate reflects what it takes to build a nationwide terrestrial network from scratch, including spectrum licensing, tower infrastructure, tower access agreements, and regulatory approvals at each stage.
However, he, too, felt the $500 billion estimate was overstated. "Verizon has a vested financial interest in making SpaceX's path look lengthy and incredibly expensive," he told TechNewsWorld. "This reflects competitive positioning more than technical analysis based on facts."
He also found Musk's timeline overly optimistic. "Building a competitive nationwide mobile service in two to three years is overly aggressive by any industry standard," he said.
"SpaceX does have structural advantages most new entrants rarely have — an existing massive satellite constellation, a large customer base, its own launch infrastructure, and a capital-efficient femtocell approach that skips the requirement to build fu…