AT&T CEO John Stankey (pictured) outlined the advantages he sees over the potential threat of a direct-to-device (D2D) service by SpaceX during a Q3 earnings call, which included much more low-band spectrum, a scaled network and the ability to penetrate buildings with its mobile service.

During yesterday’s (20 October) SpaceX earnings call, president Gwynne Shotwell said the low-band spectrum her company agreed to buy earlier this month can be paired with Wi-Fi for mobile connectivity indoors, along with devices in towers and Starlink installs across businesses and consumers’ homes.

Shotwell said Wi-Fi accounts for the vast majority of mobile connectivity, estimating its share at between 85% and 93% without providing details on how portals and passwords will be used.

“There are significant loads, even with robust Wi-Fi networks, that are out there,” AT&T’s Stankey countered on the operator’s own financial call today (21 October). “I think it takes a lot of years and a huge level of investment to get to the kind of performance levels that customers have become accustomed to in scaled networks that are running on the infrastructure that most of the incumbent providers have today.”

SpaceX has touted the nationwide low-band spectrum portfolio it bought from Grain Management as the means to enable in-building penetration for its D2D service, which Musk said yesterday will generate billions of dollars in revenue on a yearly basis.

“I wouldn’t over-rotate on what I would call one carrier of low-band spectrum,” Stankey said. “Let’s put this in perspective.”

By contrast, Stankey said AT&T operates six to eight carriers of low-band spectrum, deploying it not only at macro sites but also across every indoor building system in high-rises, hospitals and stadiums.

“We’ve got the scale where the scale matters,” he said. “98% of the traffic is where we’ve already built and where we already have capabilities and customers have become accustomed to a level of service that is pretty high.”

He added: “I feel really good about where we’re at.”

Q3 metrics
AT&T revenue grew 5.3% to $32.3 billion in the quarter ended 30 September, up from $30.7 billion a year ago.

Total service revenue increased 3.8%, its best consolidated growth in more than four years, reaching $26.3 billion. Wireless, fibre and the Lumen mass markets fibre business all contributed. Equipment revenue rose 12.1% year-on-year to $6 billion.

Income from continuing operations came in at $1.3 billion compared with $9.7 billion in the year-ago quarter, which benefited from the DirecTV transaction gain.

Post-paid phone net adds were 379,000, down 6.4% from 405,000 a year ago, with churn flat. The post-paid phone base now stands at 75.283 million, up 2%. Prepaid phone lost 21,000 customers.

Consumer and business internet net additions rose 25.4% to a record 769,000 from 613,000 a year earlier. Fibre net additions increased to 442,000 from 309,000, while fixed wireless access additions climbed to 327,000 from 304,000.

Total internet connections increased 29.3% to 16.2 million. Combined with phone additions, this pushed AT&T’s Advanced Connectivity net additions above 1 million for the second consecutive quarter. Advanced Connectivity service revenue reached $23.9 billion, up 6.1%.

AT&T added approximately 350,000 converged customers, with 42.8% of households using its fibre or Internet Air service also taking its mobile service.

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SpaceX plans to turn on its direct-to-device (D2D) service in early 2028 after launching the second generation Starlink Mobile constellation during 2027 and integrating spectrum it is acquiring.

On its Q3 earnings call, president Gwynne Shotwell said the low-band spectrum SpaceX agreed to buy earlier this month and the Federal Communications Commission’s approval to launch 15,000 next generation V2 birds “pave the way for Starlink Mobile to become a major mobile carrier in the US”.

On 8 October, SpaceX struck a deal to buy up to 14MHz of paired spectrum in the 800MHz band to support its plans. The agreement with Grain Management is expected to close in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approval.

Shotwell indicated comments on the previous quarter’s call covered smaller radios for the D2D service, which she described as not quite tower capable, that SpaceX could place on homes and businesses where Starlink is already installed.

“So, it’s not just the spectrum that we’ve talked about with the S-band,” she said on yesterday’s (20 October) earnings call. “We will basically leverage the real estate from Starlink installs and other towers.”

SpaceX plans to pair its satellites with ground-based radios to provide 5G mobile coverage, a plan many executives in the industry consider far-fetched.

When asked about the roles the satellite and terrestrial networks will play for the D2D service, CEO Elon Musk said a more detailed presentation may be needed to explain Starlink’s connectivity strategy and why the company believes it could eventually generate several hundred billion dollars in annual revenue.

“You are missing some of the pieces that we know about internally,” he said. “I can say we do see a clear path to several hundred billion dollars a year in connectivity revenue, but I think we should probably describe that in more detail in a forum that’s not limited to a few minutes at an earnings call.”

Q3 numbers
SpaceX reported net income of $4.4 billion for Q3 (ending 30 September), compared with a $1.1 billion loss a year earlier, as revenue more than doubled to $14.6 billion, driven largely by its AI business.

It was the company’s second earnings report since its June stock market listing. Revenue was up 161% year-on-year.

The Super Intelligence segment, previously reported as AI, accounted for around $6.7 billion of the roughly $9 billion increase, with revenue rising to $7.6 billion from $813 million. SpaceX attributed the segment’s growth to new cloud services agreements, the Cursor acquisition and growing use of Grok.

Income from operations was $2.8 billion, compared with a $273 million loss a year ago, and adjusted EBITDA was $8.8 billion, up 306%.

Connectivity revenue rose 69% to $5.2 billion and operating income climbed 99% to $2.4 billion.

Starlink had 13.6 million consumer broadband subscribers, up 1.6 million in the quarter and from 7.2 million in Q3 2025.

For its direct-to-device service, Shotwell said Starlink Mobile surpassed 22 million monthly users at the end of the quarter, up 37% from the previous quarter.

SpaceX remains loss-making for the year to date, with a nine-month net loss of $413 million.

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Amazon outlined plans to invest more than €16 billion in its German operations in 2027 to expand its AI infrastructure, cloud computing and satellite connectivity.

The move adds to more than €100 billion Amazon invested in Germany since 2010 as it races against rivals Google and Microsoft to build out its AI services and cloud infrastructure in the nation.

David Zapolsky, chief global affairs and legal officer, described Germany as a centre of innovation and one of Europe’s most attractive investment destinations.

“We want German businesses, communities and creators to have the infrastructure and tools they need to compete and grow.”

The fresh investment includes €4.8 billion to expand Amazon Web Services’ Frankfurt cloud region and AI infrastructure to meet increasing customer demand.

It plans to bolster connectivity through its Amazon Leo satellite network to provide high-speed internet across the country.

Amazon Leo has secured 24 slots with European launch provider Arianespace.

The company plans to also broaden its logistics footprint and create new content for its Prime Video platform.

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