Limitless Podcast - SpaceX Just Declared War on Your Cell Provider (Verizon, T-Mobile)

Episode Date: March 11, 2026

SpaceX's Starlink Mobile is eliminating connectivity dead zones across the world with internet speeds up to 150 Mbps. They crushed providing aid during California's wildfires and has grown to over 10 million customers.With new satellites on the way, SpaceX is looking to seriously disrupt traditional telecom companies, with a likely massive IPO not too far in the future.------🌌 LIMITLESS HQ ⬇️NEWSLETTER:    https://limitlessft.substack.com/FOLLOW ON X:   https://x.com/LimitlessFTSPOTIFY:             https://open.spotify.com/show/5oV29YUL8AzzwXkxEXlRMQAPPLE:                 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/limitless-podcast/id1813210890RSS FEED:           https://limitlessft.substack.com/------POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION MARKET 🔮https://bankless.cc/polymarket-podcast------TIMESTAMPS0:00 The End of Dead Zones1:44 Emergency Starlink4:59 V26:16 Owned Frequencies12:29 SpaceX's Revenue Model13:47 T-Mobile's Strategic Position16:45 The Internet of Things18:02 Global Connectivity------RESOURCESJosh: https://x.com/JoshKaleEjaaz: https://x.com/cryptopunk7213------Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠

I got a quick geography lesson for you. 90% of the Earth's surface has no reliable cell coverage. Oceans, mountains, desert, jungle, the things that cover most of the planet, they're all dead zones. In fact, even places that aren't dead zones like driving, we're in New York, driving through upstate New York, there is frequent times in which I just completely lose cell connection and am offline for better or for worse. But SpaceX has come along and decided that those days are over. The day of the dead zone is a day of the past. It's just we will never have dead zones again because last week, they rebranded their

satellite to phone service as Starlink Mobile and announced a second generation of these satellites that deliver 100 times the data capacity of what's already up there today with no dish, no special hardware. It works with your current iPhone at up to 150 megabits per second from space. That's enough to stream 4K Netflix video. That's enough to watch anything on YouTube, FaceTime with your friends. So this is a pretty compelling product that they're launching, which might come as a threat to a lot of the cellular providers that we use today, like Verizon, AT&T, and even T-Mobile, this is going to be a pretty big deal. Yeah, I've got to be honest. I start off as a hater towards Starlink because I was kind of like, okay, cool, we get additional phone coverage.

Who cares? Like, I'm not going to be in the mountains, like, for 99% of the time during the year. But I really saw the use of Sarling come to life during the LA wildfires. This was a major catastrophe event where a lot of L.A. was on fire and a lot of cellular towers were down. So you had like millions of people that had no access to data or, basic phone services that could call for loved ones or emergency services. And Starlink just kind of dropped in and they beamed, I think, 150 emergency messages in the space of like 48 hours, which helped so many people communicate and deal with the fires to around 4.4 million people. So this is really necessary technology. And I guess like the way that they're scanning, this is like

pretty cool now. Yeah. So let's talk about what Starlink is right now. Because as it is, it currently exists. In fact, there's 10 million users of it right now. So SpaceX launched this direct-to-cell satellite service back in January of 2024, just two years ago. And the first ones went up pretty quietly, but within days, their engineers were actually demonstrating texts from unmodified phones. It was the first time that an unmodified cell phone could actually send texts, video calls, and then actually FaceTime and watch videos in real-time. It was slow, but now there's 650 direct-to-cell satellites that are in orbit, which is a tiny fraction of their 10,000 total satellites that are in orbit, but it's still the world's largest provider of 4G

coverage because it reaches 10 million users over 32 countries and six continents. No one has that reach that Starlink has. In the U.S., you've probably heard of this through T-Mobile. They have T-Satellite, which is their branded version, and that's the $10 month add-on that allows you to access this today. So currently, it does SMS, picture messaging, location sharing. It works with WhatsApp, Google Maps, AccuWeather, and your phone automatically switches over to satellite service if you lose service. But it doesn't have the bandwidth that this new version is going to have. And that's the big difference maker.

The bandwidth is really going to unlock a lot of new use cases for this. Yeah, speaking of, because I was questioning why T-Mobile can't do the same thing. And the truth is they just don't have the infrastructure or scale to be able to upgrade the technology at all. You mentioned that they have access to Starlink through that package. They currently have 120 million users, but they only cover around 80% of the US. Starlink covers literally the rest of that already with the 650 satellites that you already mentioned. So although Starlink is kind of behind right now, you mentioned, it's just like a fraction of the total like 10,000 satellites that they have in orbit right now. I think they could catch up really friggin fast because they also have access to the space shuttle as well.

Yeah, and if you look at this chart, I mean, the growth is about as perfect of an exponential as it gets. They just crossed 10 million after crossing 8 million the month before. after crossing 7 million and starting at zero just six years ago. So Starlink adoption is up big time. And maybe we could talk about what actually makes this new mobile version 2 so much better. And one of the things that I'm going to share, I had Claude make this for me, so forgive me if it's a little messy. But this is the difference between these version 2 satellites and the version 1 satellite. So what we're seeing here in this traditional geo-orbit thing, these orange lines, this is what it used to look like. So it's basically like shining a giant spotlight down on Earth.

and the spotlight has to serve a lot of customers at once. What we're seeing in this other part, which is the start length V2, it's in low Earth orbit. So you'll notice that the traditional geosynchronous orbit, 35,000 kilometers high, this new one is only 550 kilometers high. It's much lower. And it uses these thousands of spot beams. So instead of one giant flashlight,

it's using spotlights to point at all of the users on the ground. And because it's so much lower, the latency is better, the bandwidth is better. It's much faster to connect these satellites. And the result is that it delivers, a 20 times throughput on versus current models of Starlink V1. So this is 16 times more beams per satellite. The face area antennas are five times larger than the current ones. And it's 100 times the data density of version 1. So it's this gigantic exponential improvement in terms of bandwidth and

what people are actually going to be able to use the service for. I do want to level set for everyone listening what that bandwidth means. So it's coming in at around 150 megabits per second, which is really good internet. No one is going to complain about that. But compared to like the average in the US, which is I think around 220 megabytes to 250, it's not lightning fast. But it's good enough.

And the fact is like billions of people all around the world will get access to this no matter how remote they are, which is awesome. The other thing I find frigging awesome is they built their own custom silicon chip for these satellites. And the media company that I thought of is Apple. Apple's done that entire thing. for all of their cellular phones,

and it's given them the ability to operate or own the entire stack of that technology. So Apple knows what its chips are capable of, so it knows what kind of products, apps, or software they can run. That's why they have the best phones, in my opinion, in the world. Elon's doing the same thing that Apple did to phones, two satellites right now. He owns the Starships, he owns the satellites,

and now he'll own the hardware that builds on or elect is composed of those satellites as well. It's just really cool. And not only does he own the hardware, he owns the spectrum. And we recorded an episode about this last year because it was this quiet news event that kind of went under the radar. But what they bought is a chunk of spectrum. And that spectrum enables them to handle and essentially take the job of these cellular providers. Because the way this works is there is a global spectrum. There's a global bandwidth of spectrum that customers or companies own. So Verizon owns some, Team Mobile owns some. Starlink bought a chunk of this. And it's limited by the FCC. You can only own a specific bandwidth. because that's how you connect to these cell phones. With SpaceX buying it, they bought, what is it, 50 megahertz of exclusive S-band spectrum for $17 billion to deal close for. This was not a small acquisition by any means,

but what it does is it enables them to act as a standalone carrier. And I think this is a really important point because forever they've been, they've had to partner with T-Mobile. They've had to partner with international suppliers to distribute this. And with this new bandwidth that they have, they can actually create their own cellular provider service. And I'm not sure who's not going to want to subscribe to a Starlink Mobile plan. If it is as fast as everything else with no dead zones, it just seems like they have such an advantage over everyone else.

So in summary, SpaceX Mobile V2 has some pretty awesome things going on. Let's just recap this quickly. So it's available on 40 plus apps and 100 plus devices. This service will offer video calls, streaming, emails. It's available in 32 countries covering 1.7 billion people. The next generation of Starlink Mobile Satellites version 2 delivers full cell coverage to places never thought possible via the highest. performing satellite to mobile network ever built is their quote basically anywhere in the world there's not it going to be a single dead zone with this new network the v2 startling mobile satellites also use the custom design silicon just like apple did and these satellites will support thousands of beams using phased array antennas versus the traditional which is a kind of spotlight that is low bandwidth and then version two enables full fiveg cellular connectivity compared to the current terrestrial services which are only available on the ground and that's lame that does not include space exploration. That does not include beaming satellite lasers down.

You know, it's hilarious that you're talking about satellites and beaming lasers to Earth, but that's not even the craziest part of this entire technology that's enabling this. We've got an entire new spaceship that's coming out, right? Like, how does this help us achieve what Salt Lake's trying to do with V2 here? Yeah. So in order to launch these new satellites into orbit, you need a much larger rocket ship. I mean, each one of these Starlink satellites will weigh 2,000 kilograms, and they're spanning 33 feet long, and Starship is going to put 50 of these into orbit at once. So currently, the way that you get these satellites into space is putting them on a Falcon rocket. There's Falcon 9, there's Falcon Heavy. There's only a limited

amount of cabin space in there that unfortunately doesn't fit these new gigantic satellites that are required in order to enable this Starlink V2 service. So Starship is necessary. The problem is that Starship is not working quite yet. The Starship program has been in the works for many years. They've been doing many test flights with varying degrees of success and failure, but it's still not ready. So what they're guiding towards now is 2027 next year for the actual launch and distribution. You got to wait a whole year for this mobile two, not for the current version. So the current version works with existing cell phones, existing hardware. But because there's also something separate that needs to happen, which is a new chip architecture for the cell phones that we use. So in order

to get 5G beam down from these new Starlink V2 satellites, Qualcomm actually is making a chip that works direct to sell. So it's rumored to be included in the next iPhone 18. It's rumored to be included in the new Samsung Galaxy phones. All of the new phones coming out at the end of this year, next year, they're going to be equipped with the hardware to enable this. So there's the convergence of SpaceX Starship actually working, and then the cell providers getting on board with this new network architecture so that your cell phone can work without any additional chips inside of it, without any additional hardware or satellite. or anything, it'll just work the same way that Verizon or AT&T does.

Going back to the math, you said that each new starship would be able to launch 50 satellites. Is that correct? Yes, about 50 of these. About 50. Okay, so then I think the idea is you need around 1,200, this is from Starlink themselves, 1,200 satellites of these new satellites up there for us to be able to have global continuous coverage. So that's like what?

That's like 24 launches. So like that doesn't seem like much. We could probably pull this off in like a year once these starships are actually mobile, right? Yeah, it seems like this will go fairly quick. They're going to be able to launch 50 of these Starlink satellites per flight. And yeah, once they deploy those 1,200 satellites, they're good. So it sounds like they're targeting six months from the time they launched the first one to the time that the network will be complete, which is fairly short. So with this guidance, it's mid-2020.

It's looking like there will be complete and total coverage. And the V2 Starlight constellation caps at 15,000 satellites. So 1,200 will be sufficient. 15,000 will be fully saturated. And that probably takes a few years to get to. But man, that ramp up is going to be quick and it's going to be available to everyone pretty quickly. Well, the other thing as well is I don't think there's any competitor to this, right? Isn't it just Elon versus Elon at this point?

I was framing it in my head. They need Starship for this to work. But also, Starlink doesn't exist or no other competitor exists unless you have Starship. like you need the vessel to get into space. And the cheapest and most performable way to do that is Elon Musk's SpaceX company, which now owns the AI company and all these other things. So it really is just a monopoly that is about to emerge. And Elon's at the forefront of all of it.

That's pretty cool. Absolutely right. I mean, Blue Origin is trying. There are other satellite companies that are trying, but no one is going to be able to get what Starship can do. I mean, they're at least five years behind at most, maybe 10, 15. I mean, these space is really hard. And even Starship doesn't work yet.

So they have to break this novel problem set just in order to get these satellites into space. And everyone else is so far behind. But what enables them to do this is this flywheel that they have, the revenue flywheel, where Starlink, the residential service that has been powering people's Wi-Fi across the country, that's generating a lot of revenue too. I mean, they have 10,000 million users now. So that enables Starlink V2. Starlink V2 generates additional revenue.

And then that creates this unbelievable market flywheel for SpaceX to continue to grow the market cap. Oh, so they put the revenue from that into Star Ship. That's how it's funding the Starship program, exactly. But it seems like they might need even more money than that because there are rumors on the street that they are going to IPO soon. And thanks to our friends over at Polymarket, we have the exact odds of when they're going to go public this year.

It seems like it's a near certainty. There's an 88% chance that they go public before December 31st, 81% chance that it's by September 30th, and a 62% chance by June 30th. So it seems like the probable window is sometime middle to late of this year. I've heard rumors that it's coming sooner. People want to come sooner, but it seems like polymarket disagrees. But it seems like we're getting a SpaceX IPO this year. How much is it going to be worth? There is another polymarket for that, which shows that it's going to be almost guaranteed over a trillion bucks. Like, $500,000 is $92%. Yeah. So there's a 92% chance this goes over a trillion.

It seems like it is going to be IPOing, I mean, well above a trillion, probably between 1.5 to 1.75 is what the rumors are saying. Polymarket confirms. Thank you again, Polymarket so much for sponsoring this section of the episode. And I mean, again, SpaceX is just like this unbelievable company that is seemingly coming for everyone. And they're threatening a lot of companies along the way. These traditional cell providers like Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, they have a serious problem on their hands. Yeah, the T-Mobile thing is an interesting one because right now, like my phone runs on T-Mobile. they're the dominant provider in the US at least. But I feel like it's a ticking time bomb for them.

Like they have this exclusive partnership with SpaceX, right? You pay an extra 10 bucks, you get access to the satellites. But that's only for one year. So I can imagine that other broadband providers or telecom providers like AT&T and stuff are going to try and outbid them. But they're outbidding the guy that's going to eventually replace them. So like I don't really understand how the economics of this work. Are they just kind of buying an extra lifeline whilst they figure out their own satellite deployment?

But then they need to rebuild it. an entire space company to be able to launch that on. So I don't understand how AT&T and all these other telecom providers survive. Am I missing something? Well, there's a lot of strain on these networks. Like there's a lot of people who demand a lot of data. And Starlink is not going to be able to subsidize all of that. So there will still be the need for these ground-based coverages that work in particular

for higher density areas that need a lot of bandwidth. So you'll notice one of the newer things is 5G UWB, ultra-wideband. and that is the super high-powered bandwidth that gives you up to like a gigabit per second of internet. In fact, it's so good it's replacing some of the Wi-Fi setups that people have in their homes because it's very high-powered. They're local cell towers. That is a unique advantage to ground-based infrastructure. It has much lower latency.

It has much greater bandwidth. But if you are not contingent on needing a terabit per second and you value this additional coverage anywhere in the world, then Starlink is probably for you. And we've seen this with the dishes that they have with the Starlink residential plans. People take it on road trips. People take it camping. If you live on a farm somewhere, you don't have connection. It's better than most of the options that we have today.

But it's just going to apply to the phone. So while it might not replace these sell companies entirely, it certainly will start to displace some of their customers if they don't partner with them like T-Mobile is doing. Gotcha. Wait, Josh. I think I have an answer to my own question, which is, what do you got? Well, like, I was thinking about like Starlink having covered. for anywhere in the world,

including really rural remote areas where there's not that many people. So why would that be useful? Who are the people and customers that are going to be paying for that? And then I realized it's probably not going to be people. It's going to be like autonomous vehicles or farming infrastructure.

Any device that requires the internet that can extract or observe data and feed it back into a system that might be AI, for example, would be inherently useful for these satellites. this internet connectivity. Sorry, I just had like a mind-blown experience. Whilst realizing this, I was like, oh, it's not just for humans. It's for any and every detection or device system that's out there. And you can place that remotely on the beacon or the top of a mountain or somewhere

completely icy and remote. The world's your voice of that. This is a really important point for the internet of things. As we start to deploy a lot more hardware that's using AI models, that's using, you know, inference or reasoning models, there is going to be a benefit to having it online. And a lot of places in which these things happen are rural. They don't have a lot of infrastructure. And giving it that cellular connectivity, it's going to be a pretty big deal.

Because traditionally, in order to do this, you need a big satellite. Now it's compressed down to the size of a small little iPhone chip. I mean, you could put that on anything. And that really enables a lot of the world. And when you think about the world broadly, three to four billion people on Earth have no reliable internet connection. Like, they just cannot access the internet.

and in a world in which it's so connected and that has so much value, there is such a huge untapped market available for Starlink. And what we're seeing is they've, they frequently make it free in places of chaos or places that are having issues because they want to help out the people. But I'm sure there will be subsidized plans for even lower income countries or areas where they can really bring the whole world online. And it's this incredibly powerful technology that is here and it's growing exponentially. And with this Starlink or with the Starship V3 launches, it's going to start to be deployed in the real world. And by this time next year,

there's a good chance that these V2 satellites are going to be very close to launching. And by the end of next year, we'll have a full network of them. It's hard to wrap my head around all of this being owned by one single company. Like, SpaceX owns the starships. They own the satellites.

They own the AI. They own the distribution layer through the social media company. And I'm sure I'm missing a bunch of other companies embedded within that and projects within that. But this IPO is going well over $1 trillion. I'm going to bet like 1.5 to 1.7 probably closes. That seems like a good bet.

If it launches mid-year, I'm guessing it's going to be over $2 trillion by the end of the year. This might be bull market speaking, but that's my bet. So are you a buyer of SpaceX? Are you interested in joining that? But I can go further than that. I'll be a buyer and a holder. Like I don't care what the price does.

Like this company is a once-in-a-lifetime generational company, probably literally out of this world. So I'm going to hold them better on in on for this one. Yeah, you and me both. I'm in it. This is going to be really exciting. I will be holding my SpaceX shares for an eternity. And I'm just like admiring from afar and from hopefully close up of all these

amazing things they're doing, how they're changing the world and how it's just uniquely positioned in a way that no other company can do. They've been building this for so long. And they have such a far head start and they're just continuing to put their foot on the gas and crush it. So that is the Starlink update. That is the cool new technology. that is coming to a cell phone near you.

The days of dead zones are over, and I cannot personally wait because I go hiking a lot. I love being out in the middle of nowhere, and I never have connection. And some people value that. How are you going to post those Instagrams, Josh? When it's emerges, yes, someone's got to post the pictures. Come on now.

Or perhaps you just want to, like, you know, reach out to someone or find a map so you don't get lost or don't get hurt. There's a lot of help. There's a lot of use cases across the board. Regardless of whether you want to be connected to the internet or not, it is valuable having that option. And that's what SpaceX enables. And that's what Starlink is going to do. And it's just this unbelievably impressive project from Elon and co. And yeah, it's just been, it's been awesome. So hope you enjoyed this episode. Any final, final thoughts before we leave?

No, it's been awesome. Thank you folks for listening. There are thousands, literally thousands of new listeners to the show. So welcome. We are finding you and seeing your comments across X, across YouTube and across all other publications that we have on newsletter as well. You guys are extremely active and we appreciate it. If you enjoyed this episode, give us a thumbs up. If you're not subscribed, please subscribe. It helps us massively. Turn on notifications if you're feeling particularly generous. If you're listening to this on a platform like Spotify or Apple Music,

give us a thumbs up, give us a rating. It helps us out massively. We just had an awesome episode come out around uploading a human brain onto an AI chip and getting it to play a computer game, as well as uploading a fly brain. Go check that out. None of what I just said is unreal. It is literally, it happened. Go check it out.

And yeah, that's it. We'll see you guys on the next one. Awesome. Thanks for watching. We'll see you.