(Credit: AST SpaceMobile)
A director at SpaceX is questioning rival AST SpaceMobile’s plan to bring satellite connectivity to phones, casting doubt about the company’s technology and approach.
In a tweet on Wednesday, Ben Longmier, senior director for satellite engineering at SpaceX, disputed how AST has said it only needs 45 to 60 company satellites to offer nationwide coverage for the US. According to Longmier, AST’s network simply won’t be large enough, resulting in spotty signal quality.
“The notion that AST will cover the US with continuous data with 60 sats is incorrect. No one wants bursty data separated by tens of minutes of 0 bps,” he wrote.
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SpaceX is developing its own satellite-to-phone service via cellular Starlink. The company has already kicked off beta tests with T-Mobile users, delivering satellite connectivity to iPhones and Samsung devices using a growing constellation of over 400 satellites.
The 400 satellites have already shown they can power SMS messages to phones based in cellular dead zones, although the signal quality can be inconsistent. SpaceX is also working (and lobbying) to bring voice calls and data downloads to the satellite network.
In another tweet, Longmier added: “We want to launch a couple hundred more sats so that the whole US has a high-quality data experience. No user will tolerate long gaps in data coverage. Any LEO [low-Earth orbiting] operator needs many hundreds of sats for this type of coverage.”
AST SpaceMobile didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But the tweets from Longmier highlight the growing rivalry between the two companies. In October, SpaceX also accused AST of spreading misinformation to the FCC while deriding it as a “meme stock” out to derail progress on the company’s cellular Starlink technology.
On the technology front, SpaceX has talked about operating thousands of cellular Starlink satellites in the coming years, similar to the home internet-focused Starlink business. In contrast, AST has talked about a smaller constellation spanning 60 larger satellites, although the company previously filed for regulatory authority to operate up to 243.
So far, AST has only launched five of its “BlueBird” satellites, which recently gained FCC approval to start operational tests. However, each BlueBird is exceptionally large, with a 700-square-foot communication array capable of beaming high-speed data and powering video calls.
To improve the signal quality further, the company is preparing second-generation BlueBird models that promise to be 3.4 times larger and deliver a 10 times boost in capacity. Both AT&T and Verizon have signed up to use the company’s technology, while a vocal group of stock investors has been touting AST as the future leader in mobile satellite connectivity.
Hence, the public can expect more debates and regulatory spats over which company’s technology performs best, especially as T-Mobile aims to move the cellular Starlink system out of beta and to a mainstream release later this year.
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