SpaceX announced on Thursday an agreement to acquire nationwide low-band spectrum licenses, advancing plans to turn Starlink Mobile into a major US mobile carrier through a network combining satellite and terrestrial services.
The agreement covers up to 14 megahertz of paired spectrum in the 800 MHz band, the company said in a statement. The acquisition remains subject to final Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval.
SpaceX said the spectrum would address a key technical gap by allowing signals to penetrate obstacles such as walls, helping provide coverage inside buildings. Most existing mobile devices already support the band, it added.
The low-band frequencies would complement Starlink Mobile’s global 2 GHz mid-band spectrum, which the company plans to use for high-bandwidth capacity in the US.
Once regulatory approval is secured, SpaceX plans to combine its satellite-to-mobile constellation with terrestrial infrastructure to provide connectivity indoors, outdoors and in areas without cellular coverage.
Separately, SpaceX said the FCC this week approved its next-generation Starlink Mobile constellation application, authorizing the launch of 15,000 satellites optimized for global operations using 2 GHz spectrum.
The company said its V2 Starlink Mobile satellites would deliver more than 100 times the bandwidth of the current generation, supporting high-speed connections directly to unmodified mobile devices.
The FCC also authorized additional communications bands that would allow the satellites to use Starlink’s existing ground gateway network, according to SpaceX.