SpaceX spectrum deal sends would-be rivals lower
Shares of struggling satellite services company EchoStar soared Monday after the company — which had recently tottered close to bankruptcy — announced the sale of some of its wireless spectrum licenses to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s SpaceX for $17 million.
The sale provides a competitive advantage to Musk’s growing Starlink satellite services business, as the licenses it’s acquiring from EchoStar allow Starlink to operate ground-based broadband and cellphone services, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Entities that stand to be hurt by the emergence of a Musk-led SpaceX Starlink service got hit hard on the news. AST SpaceMobile, which has plans to offer a similar satellite-to-consumer cellular service, tumbled.
So did wireless tower providers like Crown Castle and American Tower. Low-cost cellular service provider T-Mobile, which had a deal with SpaceX, also slumped, as my colleague Luke Kawa noted earlier, along with other large wireless telecommunication services providers.
The wireless telecommunications industry grouping within the S&P 500 was down more than 2.5% shortly after noon, making it the worst-performing industry in the S&P 500 on Monday.
Entities that stand to be hurt by the emergence of a Musk-led SpaceX Starlink service got hit hard on the news. AST SpaceMobile, which has plans to offer a similar satellite-to-consumer cellular service, tumbled.
So did wireless tower providers like Crown Castle and American Tower. Low-cost cellular service provider T-Mobile, which had a deal with SpaceX, also slumped, as my colleague Luke Kawa noted earlier, along with other large wireless telecommunication services providers.
The wireless telecommunications industry grouping within the S&P 500 was down more than 2.5% shortly after noon, making it the worst-performing industry in the S&P 500 on Monday.
