Spectrum Still Needs a Network

In 2007, I tracked the 700 MHz auction on this blog. Dish Network appeared on the bidder list, and a Credit Suisse analyst questioned whether the band suited Dish. The FCC closed Auction 73 in March 2008 with about $19.6 billion in winning bids. Verizon and AT&T spent $16.3 billion of that. Verizon took the largest nationwide block with a $4.74 billion bid, which topped Google's $4.71 billion by $30 million. A Dish Network subsidiary won 168 licenses in the E Block for $711.9 million. Dish is now part of EchoStar.

On October 9, the same day I published "Walls Are the Hard Part of Phone Service From Space," John Saw, T-Mobile's chief technology officer, published a LinkedIn article titled "Spectrum Alone Doesn't Make a Network." He wrote it after SpaceX agreed to acquire Grain Management's nationwide 800 MHz portfolio, pending FCC approval. The companies did not disclose terms. Grain reportedly sought about $6 billion in August, and the Wall Street Journal valued the deal at about $8 billion. T-Mobile sold those licenses to Grain, and T-Mobile now competes with Starlink Mobile. Read the article with that in mind. The engineering claims are checkable, so they follow after some background.

T-Mobile and SpaceX have worked together. T-Mobile's T-Satellite service runs on Starlink, and T-Mobile's one-year exclusive agreement is ending. On its August 5 earnings call, SpaceX said it will build out terrestrial networks with its EchoStar spectrum and expects Starlink Mobile to win customers from Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. T-Mobile executives have told analysts that satellite service carries about 0.0002% of network usage. T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T have since announced a satellite joint venture, and T-Mobile removed the Starlink name from its T-Satellite webpage. The carriers say existing satellite agreements stay in place, so the two companies are partners and rivals at once.

According to Wccftech's report, Saw makes three technical points. First, the Grain block is about 14 MHz of paired spectrum. Starlink Mobile would hold roughly 80 MHz in total, some of it uplink only, while T-Mobile holds nearly 400 MHz of low-band and mid-band spectrum. Second, a satellite hundreds of kilometers up faces about 50 dB more path loss than a cell site 1 km away, and moving from 2 GHz to 800 MHz recovers only a few dB. Third, one satellite beam covers an area that hundreds of terrestrial sectors serve. Millions of simultaneous users streaming video and making calls need that density.

The path loss figure holds up. Free-space loss at 2 GHz is about 153 dB at 550 km and about 98.5 dB at 1 km, a gap of roughly 55 dB. The next-generation satellites the FCC approved would orbit at 326 to 335 km, which narrows the gap to about 50 dB at 330 km. The same formula gives about 8 dB between 2 GHz and 800 MHz for equal antenna gain. The bigger benefit of the lower band is less loss through walls and foliage, which free-space math omits. That benefit explains why SpaceX wants the block. Yesterday's post covered the loss at the wall. This post covers the loss before the signal reaches the wall, and the two add together. Saw addresses link budget and capacity. SpaceX addresses indoor coverage. Both can be correct.

Free-space path loss for a cell site and for satellites at 550 km and 330 km, at 2 GHz and 800 MHz. Calculated at equal antenna gain.

Open items remain. SpaceX says most existing phones already support the 800 MHz band. Starlink's current service uses standard LTE signaling from satellites that carry LTE base station payloads, with Doppler and timing compensation applied on the satellite, so unmodified phones connect as they would to a terrestrial tower. Chipset support matters in two cases. The first is the 2 GHz EchoStar spectrum, which overlaps the 5G NR NTN band n252 that commercial phone chipsets do not yet include. The second is a move to the native 3GPP NR NTN standard, which Starlink's current system does not follow. On October 6, the FCC approved 15,000 next-generation satellites for Starlink Mobile in a partial grant. The approval adds capacity to the system Saw describes.

The 2008 bidder list showed who had money. In 2025, after the FCC questioned its spectrum use and SpaceX called the holdings underused, EchoStar agreed to sell its AWS-4 and H-block licenses to SpaceX for about $17 billion and its 600 MHz and 3.45 GHz licenses to AT&T for about $23 billion. Saw has the title right. EchoStar held the licenses, and the buyers owned the networks.

SpaceX once let its boosters fall into the ocean after a single flight. It now lands and reuses them. Saw lists real obstacles: path loss, capacity, and chipsets. I expect SpaceX to work on those the way it worked on boosters.

Correction: Yesterday's post listed two Grain prices without explaining them. Grain reportedly sought about $6 billion, and the Wall Street Journal valued the deal at about $8 billion.