Anpanman - SpaceMob Momentum: FirstNet, Verizon's Pivot, and the New Glenn Launch

[00:00:06] Speaker A: This is the AST SpaceMobile Podcast.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: It will just basically come to your phone and be seamless regardless of where you are. We don't want the user even to know that it's connected by satellite. Listen, the opportunity that we have is very, very, very large.
[00:00:26] Speaker C: Hey everyone, sorry about that. Um, I am a Spectrum internet customer and either Spectrum is messed up or, um, X is messed up or probably both. Um, anyway, I'm gonna restart the space. Um, what I did is I tethered, uh, my, my desktop to my phone. Um, kind of silly that the phone is, the phone provides better service than, um, cable internet, but. Here we are. Anyway, so I'll start over again. So I wanted to summarize some of the recent news around AST SpaceMobile and what to look forward to. Maybe first I'll start with FirstNet. And so today we found out that FirstNet launched the AST SpaceMobile section of their website. And here, what's really cool is that obviously, you know, the companies have been testing together for quite some time. We saw AT&T provide a video post of local, state, and federal officials utilizing the service. And of course, you know, beta testing is probably underway as we speak, and I can talk a little more about that shortly. But yeah, this website is great in that it describes a service that will be available later this year. It will be a smaller initial rollout. to more recent devices, but then it'll be rolled out more broadly. And so there's probably going to be a few stages of this, but for the US in terms of safety and sovereignty, FirstNet is obviously critical to that. And for those that don't know, FirstNet is the first responder network. It was created after 9/11 when a bunch of firefighters and police who were there first at first in response to the terrorist attacks, because the cellular network was totally inundated with people trying to call out. Basically, no one had service, right? And so it was difficult to coordinate with first responders. And of course, tragically, the towers collapsed and many perished. But coming out of that, FirstNet was created from the federal government. There was an allocation of spectrum in the 700 megahertz band. It was put up for tender, to create this new separate network from existing commercial networks. And AT&T won that with a several billion dollar commitment for investment and to manage that network over time. And so that's where FirstNet came about. And so if you can imagine during a natural disaster or if it's something beyond that, that happens in the US, this network is supposed to be the backbone for First responders who are police, medical, firefighters, military. And so that's where FirstNet plays a really important role in the United States. And so if you imagine what that network means and the deployment where AT&T has had to build out a ton of towers to light up the spectrum, there's still a lot of parts of the US where first responders need to be, which are dead spots where it's not economical to roll out towers. And so by leveraging AST SpaceMobile's satellite service to light up that spectrum in the 700 MHz band, you actually are able to accomplish the holy grail, right? Which is providing broadband connectivity no matter where you are in the US in any situation. And this also includes for example, in Florida, when you had a hurricane take out terrestrial cell towers, AST with its precise beamforming and satellites could actually light up spectrum that's gone down, whether it's 700, 800 megahertz. And so first responders and victims can actually communicate during those periods of time where test towers are down, power lines are down, what have you, right? And so that's why This service is absolutely critical. I think we are probably close to finding out what a definitive commercial agreement will be between FirstNet and AST SpaceMobile. I'd expect that to be probably worth a few hundred million dollars over the course of several years. Whether that's— there's probably like some minimal Guaranteed amount, and then you, you've got per user pricing as well. But yeah, we'll find out about that relatively soon. And there was a Space Mob member who reached out to me and said that their brother-in-law is a, I think, a first responder, and they have FirstNet service. They have a phone that works on FirstNet. And this person was actually out in an area where there is no cellular coverage, and they received a phone call. Now, I haven't heard, I haven't got any additional color as to how the voice quality was or what, what actually transpired, but when they got the call, they were surprised to see that the phone worked. And then when they looked at it, um, it specifically showed that there was satellite coverage. And so that's obviously not, uh, because it was an AT&T FirstNet phone, it's not any other service. Um, you know, I guess perhaps if it was an iPhone, it could have been, it could have had some Globalstar texting, uh, for connectivity, but not a voice call.
[00:05:44] Speaker B: Right.
[00:05:44] Speaker C: And so I'm waiting to hear back additional color on how that call went, and maybe if there could be screenshots, or maybe this person could go back. But I would say if you are a FirstNet user and you're listening to this right now, I would encourage you to— you know, there's a handful of applications that Space Mob has developed to track Bluebird satellites, but I would encourage you to get one of those. And go head out to an area where there's definitely no cell coverage. And, and, you know, at the time that a Bluebird is going to, you know, cross over overhead and see if you actually get service. Because what this could tell us is that beta testing is already, has already turned on. Um, and maybe this person, um, might have gotten service, um, you know, during a time when maybe they weren't supposed to, but it was being tested by others. Uh, which is probably likely. But, um, either way, if you do have FirstNet, please, um, do us all a favor, do yourself a favor, uh, go out and give it a try and, and report back because I think that would be really cool. Um, moving on, I did want to talk about, um, Starlink direct-to-cell performance. And so there was an engineer at one of Starlink's customers, which was, uh, I think it's Virgin Media's O2, which is a a UK MNO that recently signed a commercial agreement with Starlink. And this person actually disclosed what real-world performance for Starlink direct-to-cell is. And so if you guys will recall, when Elon and Mike Sievert of T-Mobile announced this service back in 2022 in competition with AST, they had claimed that the data rates were gonna be anywhere between 7 megabits per second. And then I think some of their engineers on Twitter said that they could get up to 15 megabits per second. And so, however, this engineer at O2 for real-world usage said right now they see 4 megabits per second. And so that's not to a single user unless, you know, there only is one user in the area, but the beam, the diameter of the service, which, was disclosed in this discussion is around 50 kilometers in diameter, right? And so that's about the size of Luxembourg. And so each one of these Starlink V2 mini satellites, um, can put down 40 beams, 40 cell beams of 50 kilometers in diameter. And each one of those is a, is 4 megabits per second, right? And so if you think about the total throughput of the satellite, that's pretty low, right? And so maybe this kind of goes back to what we've always discussed, which is building a purpose-built satellite from first principles, ground up to do exactly this versus taking existing architecture and grafting on Swarm IoT and seeing if that can work, right? And so here you truly have a minimally viable product, right? And so if you can imagine 50 users and the size of a the size of Luxembourg, if they were to all use that data simultaneously, that would be 80 kilobytes per second each, right? And so for those old heads out there, if you recall back in the days of like a 9600 baud modem, that's the equivalent speed of, call it, 8 times a 9600 baud modem, which is pretty slow, right? But then in the preponderance of no service, that's good, right? Because then you can text and you can send messages and do some simple things. And if everyone's, you know, like cable, if everyone's not using it at the same time, then your speed goes up, right? And so if there's only 2 users out of 50 using it, then they'll each have 2 megabits per second, right? And as you know, for people who architect cellular systems, the expectation is that at any point in time, not everybody is on the phone utilizing heavy data at the same time. Like there's some algorithms and math that goes behind it, but it's going to be some small fraction of that, right? And so that said, you know, if everyone's camping and they all want service and they're all, I don't know, they're all trying to do some type of, you know, chatting, which you probably shouldn't do if you're out in the outdoors, because I think Um, you should be enjoying the outdoors, but, you know, maybe if you're skiing together and, and you need to communicate, then yeah, go ahead, use your phone. But, um, but yeah, I think obviously 4 megabits per second is very low. Um, just to give people some calibration of, of how that compares, so BlueWalker 3, which is AST SpaceMobile's first, uh, test satellite, which is still orbiting the Earth right now, um, that, that satellite achieved 20 megabits per second. Right. And that was on 5 megahertz of spectrum, similar to what, low-band spectrum, by the way, similar to what Starlink is using, which is 5 megahertz of mid-band spectrum. And for AST SpaceMobile, whether it's BlueWalker 3 or Block 1 or Block 2, you're looking at a 24-kilometer diameter beam. So a smaller beam, but then a lot more throughput within that beam. And so if you have You know, if you have a number of users in that beam, they should experience better performance than for Starlink, right? And so 20 megabits per second for a test satellite. And then eventually, as AST disclosed earlier this week, they expect to significantly exceed 120 megabits per second, right? And so that's orders of magnitude much faster than what Starlink has today. And additionally, Starlink, um, at Mobile World Congress, they talked about the idea of trying to get their version 2 satellite, which is going to be much bigger and it's going to need Starship to get to 150 megabits per second. Um, I'm not sure, I can't verify this, but I did see, you know, someone, it appears that they work at Starlink. Um, they had tweeted that they could get to 150 megabits by using MIMO. utilizing 2 satellites, and that's how you get to 150. And so that actually was a new disclosure to me. And that actually, I don't know, that's pretty bad, right? Like AST is expecting to get to 120 megabits per second, you know, for 1 satellite, right? Whereas Starlink is saying we can get to 150 if we utilize 2 satellites. utilizing MIMO. And so yeah, I mean, I think going back to this whole idea of who's the competition, it's not really Starlink because the technology is not really comparable. And even for V2, it's not going to be comparable. And so for AST, 120 megabits per second for a beam from the current Block 2 satellite that's being launched, That doesn't take into account MIMO. It doesn't take into account Cohere's technology. It doesn't take into account carrier aggregation. You're probably looking at multiples of that, which I discussed this in the latest quarterly update. Bell said, based off of our technology, we think we can 3 to 10x that. And so yeah, If you've been working on this technology for the better part of, you know, what is it, 7, 8, 9 years versus your competitor who got into it recently and really didn't start at the bottom in terms of ground principle, you know, first principles to design it. And then they're also doing a ton of other stuff, but you're solely focused on this. You'd expect to have, you know, technological advantage, right? And you're going to press that advantage. Like the company has 3,800 patent, patent pending claims. They're not sitting on their hands. They're very, they've got a roadmap for the next several generations. And so to compete with that is going to be tough, right? And I think it was SES, they said at Mobile World Congress, someone asked, you know, hey, why aren't you guys getting into direct-to-device? And they specifically said, hey, if we If we want to do that, it's going to cost us $6 to $8 billion to get to something that's comparable. And that's to get to where the current players are. It's not like going beyond that. So yeah, it's to me seeing Starlink performance data where you don't have some of the Starlink stands putting out, making out these These different claims, but you actually have a customer saying, this is what it is. It's for texting. And, you know, hopefully it'll get better in the future with the next generation of satellites. But yeah, that's what it is. And so it's not really a competitor. Starlink Direct-to-Cell today is a competitor to Skylo and Globalstar, right? We're talking about messaging. It's not broadband, it's not video, it's not voice, it's not any of those things. So, um, definitely keep that in mind, right? Because I think obviously some people are itching that, hey, we're not getting our satellites up. And yeah, this stuff is hard. It takes time, right? And so, um, for those that are wondering about Bluebird 7, um, I'll talk a bit more about it shortly. But, um, you know, that Blue Origin New Glenn launch is absolutely critical for Blue Origin. And so they need to get that right. Um, this is their first time reusing a booster, you know, refurbishing it and putting it back out there for launch. And so, um, so it's taken time for them to make sure that they're getting it together, but I think we might have some good news next week. Um, moving on. So I, I do want to talk about Japan. Um, this news came out earlier today that the Japanese Prime Minister is going to, in the meeting with Trump, um, is going to ask to be— to join Golden Dome. And, um, This makes all the sense in the world. I mean, it would be kind of silly for the US to build this infrastructure that circles the globe and just use it for the US. It should be a service that is leveraged with allies, right? Because as allies contribute intelligence and technologies to that fabric, it's just going to make it better, right? And beyond, I mean, and that's not even taking into account the fact that you can amortize the cost of Golden Dome. So for example, I know people have kind of, you know, they've— when you look at the amount of expenditures that are likely going to come for Golden Dome, it's going to strain the US budget, right? But then if you've got Japan and other allied nations kicking in several billion dollars a year of budget, then the price becomes very reasonable, right? Right. And so, um, someone had asked, uh, in a tweet earlier, they said, well, what about the, the proliferation of drones? Like, doesn't that render Golden Dome useless? Like the fact that you've got missile-based interceptors and, um, like, why would you use that? Uh, wouldn't, shouldn't you use lasers? And since these, you know, there's going to be swarms of drones, it doesn't even matter. Um, actually drone warfare amps up the need for Golden Dome, I would argue.
[00:17:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:20] Speaker C: In that, yeah, you're moving beyond just ICBMs. And let's importantly, like Golden Dome is to protect the US continent, right? And so it's not as if drones are going to fly cross-Atlantic. I mean, maybe they will one day, but you're typically looking at hypersonic missiles, ICBMs, intercontinental ballistic missiles. And then of course you've got drones, right? In the contested war area, contested area of fighting, then now there's this preponderance of drones. But I think Golden Dome actually heightens the need for, in the world of proliferating drone warfare, I think it actually heightens the needs for what is Golden Dome going to provide, right? It's going to provide PNT, position navigation timing, which is GPS, which we all know gets at this point is very, um, it's very vulnerable. And so by having Golden Dome leveraging, um, you know, a handful of commercial constellations, um, you're going to have a resiliency, right, and redundancy. And so yeah, you may not use missile-based interceptors against drones in the future, but you're going to need to, um, if you have anti-drones, you have these little drones that go take out other drones, they're going to need, um, Positioning information. They're going to need communications, right? And so you're going to need, whether it's optical cables, but also cellular networks. I mean, each one of these drones are probably going to carry a multitude of communication ways to communicate in order to get through to your adversary, right? Or take down drones that are being sent at you. And so Golden Dome, I would argue, becomes even more valuable in that situation. And then you've got radar sensing too, where Golden Dome, you know, you're, you're going to be able to detect launches. I'm not sure. I mean, I'm not an expert. I'm not sure if, if the, the level of granularity will be able to track drones, but the fact that Golden Dome, um, you know, utilizing satellites and spectrum, being able to actually track stealth aircraft, uh, I would assume, and, and with the level of fidelity that you can get from for example, a Bluebird satellite, I would assume that you'd be able to track, um, uh, flying drones too, which I think Katzi— I gotta go back and look at a post, but, um, there, there he had posted about how you could track pretty small objects with, with the satellite. And I think also Piranha did, did as well. Um, and so all this stuff actually becomes more important. And then on top of that, um, one of the aces up the sleeves, which Professor Todd Humphreys talked about at UT Austin, the fact that you're going to have a very powerful electronic warfare platform, which can do a multitude of things, whether that's disrupting communications or taking down networks. And those are the networks that actually communicate with drones. And so all the stuff I'd argue Golden Dome becomes, you know, what we've seen in Iran unfold thus far. I think Golden Dome is even more critical, right? Um, because imagine, I mean, you're seeing a little bit of it with, uh, SpaceX's Starshield, where Starshield was leveraged to do some of the precision, you know, work, um, over Iran. Um, Golden Dome is going to take that to an entirely another level. And so I would argue its importance goes higher. And on top of that, as more allies get invited into the fold, trusted partners, that network is going to become even more critical and more effective. And so I think the news that Japan is joining— I know this administration discussed potentially bringing Canada into the fold, which again makes a ton of sense given the geography. But I think including other allies would, you know, it makes absolute sense. Right. And I don't know ultimately if like, if Europe will join that or if they'll create their own. But even if they create their own, like somebody is going to have to provide that service. They're going to have to build the satellites. They're going to, you know, if they want a parallel at the same level capabilities, then they'll have to talk to companies like ASD Space Mobile to do that. So yeah, that's some big news. I think, yeah, I mean, the market is fixated on the conflict in Iran and we're looking at headlines day to day, but just take a step back and think about like what's unfolding there and what becomes more important here, like in your portfolio. And I'd argue AST SpaceMobile, with each passing day of this conflict, the defense side of the business becomes more and more valuable. Let's see, another thing that happened this week, Verizon formally withdrew their opposition at the FCC to AST SpaceMobile's commercial application. And so for those that don't know all the history, I think it was like back in 2020, 2021 when AST, I think when Abel had started talking about this service in 2017 and Oh gosh, maybe it was 2019 or maybe it was 2020. Um, so when he had filed the application for commercial service initially, and obviously it was, that was a long time ago and things, things are quite different now, but, um, you know, 2, 2 of the, the largest players, um, T-Mobile and Verizon filed opposition. You know, they're like this, they didn't want, obviously they felt competitively threatened and they didn't want the service. They complained that, um, It's probably going to create interference and these large satellites, there's like debris risk, Kessler stuff, whatever they could throw against the wall, they threw the spaghetti against the wall to see what would stick. And they also were like, this service, it's not going to work and whatever. They just wanted to put an end to this. And of course, AT&T decided to work with AST SpaceMobile and Fast forward to 2022, T-Mobile was like, hey, actually everything we said before, we take that back. It actually, this makes a lot of sense. It could work. And we're going to work with Starlink. And they announced their partnership in 2022. And then of course in 2024, Verizon, after watching developments unfold for both Starlink and AST SpaceMobile, having talked to both companies, diligenced it, engineers, business people got together with AST SpaceMobile. They got together with Starlink and looked at everything that was going on. They said, hey, you know what? We're going to work with AST SpaceMobile, which was one of the biggest points of validation for the company. I mean, this is what rerated stock from 5 to 39, right? Where you've got the world's most profitable wireless market and 2 of the largest players in the world in terms of profitability, Verizon, AT&T, they decided to pick AST SpaceMobile and that was a huge sea change. And so fast forward to today, Verizon, as a result of that initial partnership, they threw their regulatory support behind AST. They've been very active in the docket. They contributed the most valuable thing that an MNO has beyond cash or any of that stuff. which is their spectrum. They contributed their 850 megahertz spectrum to be used in partnership with AT&T. They put aside their competitive opposition to AT&T and they said, hey, let's partner together and let's help this little company out of Midland, Texas make this a reality. And they also invested $100 million, right? They invested $35 million in the convert back then, which seems like ages ago, uh, in January of 2024. Um, no, sorry, they bought that in June of 2024. And then with joining AT&T, um, Google, and Vodafone, and then they also provided $65 million of commercial prepayments, right? And so, um, fast forward to today, um, they, this past week, they withdrew their formal opposition, right? And so why did they keep that there? Uh, it's You know, they might have kept that there just in case, you know, so for example, AT&T is the senior partner and Verizon's kind of like the junior partner in this venture. And so AT&T is this quarterback, they're running the process. And so if you're Verizon, you know, they're a key competitor, right? And so you probably kept that formal opposition in the docket just in case and wanted, you know, wanted to make sure that everything Everything we talked about, you are actually. So now we're at the point where, you know, for those that don't know, the the company, the company did put forward a revised U.S. commercial, you know, application, a U.S. application for commercial access. I think it was like back in September. It was finally accepted by the FCC, and then there was a comment period which ended in October. I think the end of October. And so we're kind of in the sweet spot for when the FCC is likely to decide whether to grant or grant with modifications or deny the application for US market access.
[00:26:56] Speaker A: Right.
[00:26:56] Speaker C: And so, you know, with this new FCC chair, Chairman Carr, he obviously has been focused on removing bureaucracy and expediting the process for FCC approvals. And so we're pretty much there. Like, it's time to approve that application. And to have Verizon withdraw their formal opposition, I think is a bit of a tell. Like, we're probably pretty damn close. There was some back and forth recently, I think in January or February with the parties and the FCC. And then you had a meeting with attorneys from AT&T and Verizon. You know, there were no principals involved. The FCC also ASD Space Mobile and RKF Engineering. And so when you, when you have those final meetings where, um, it's basically to like cross T's and dot I's, that means like you're pretty close, right? Um, as I've discussed in Spaces before, you wouldn't have the CEOs of Verizon, AT&T show up for that. Because if you did, that probably means like you've got a problem, right? Where principals have to get involved. Whereas here, the attorneys are kind of cleaning stuff up. And so I think we're pretty close. Um, we could be getting FCC approval anytime now. And Based off of, you know, I put out a poll just for fun of what the stock price market, the market reaction for stock price would be. I put some like pretty wild numbers out there and of course there were a number, well, there were a lot of replies saying it's priced in or the stock is going to be flat or down. I think, you know, some of those people are doing it for humor, but I don't think the market really understands what FCC approval means because then once that's, once you receive approval, and you have the ability to put satellites up without needing special temporary authorizations or any of that stuff, that's really valuable, right? I mean, you could even, someone could even buy a DSpace mobile just to get access to that, right? Or you have companies that perhaps they were approved to put up a constellation and they failed in it. And then that approval is actually quite valuable. Like people, another company could go buy that and within the framework and the parameters of that application, they could try to do the same and maybe get some modifications to it. But that is a huge milestone, right? And I think once that news drops, you should see a pretty significant rerating of the stock because that pretty much says like the FCC, after reviewing data that you've put forward and your plans, they giving you unfettered commercial access, right? And so there's no more waiting and providing test data, doing this, that, or the other. It's all systems go. And that is a, just like getting Verizon coming in as a partner and investing, that is a huge point of validation, right? So the FCC is viewed as the global leader in terms of cutting-edge regulatory frameworks. And so for ASD to get that, you would then expect the dominoes to fall for other developed markets and underdeveloped markets.
[00:30:10] Speaker B: Right.
[00:30:11] Speaker C: And so that's a huge— I think whether everyday investors, institutions, bears, and by the way, bears, the consulting experts and all these guys years ago were like, that's never going to happen. There's no way they're going to get commercial access. Maybe the day that it gets approved, we'll dig up some of those, those, those gems. But, um, but yeah, that's— I mean, once that happens, that's, that's going to be a game-changing event, which I don't think the market fully understands, right? Um, and so if you, if you do have dry powder, um, maybe save some for that specific day when it does happen, because it's going to be glorious. Um, let's see. So The last thing I wanted to talk about is next week. And so I kind of hinted at this and people are like, what do you mean?
[00:31:02] Speaker B: What is that?
[00:31:03] Speaker C: What do you mean next week? And so, you know, we've been waiting for a launch date to get set. And as Tanner has pointed out quite correctly, that before a launch can happen, you actually need a static fire test. And so as everyone knows, we're reusing the New Glenn 2 booster, never tell me the odds. And this is a marquee event for Blue Origin in that this is going to be the first time that they've reused a booster. And that booster has been going through the process of getting refurbished and being dressed to launch another vehicle. And so this is the holy grail of launch where you can reuse things and bring the cost down as a result. And so, um, from, you know, various like sleuthing that Space Mob has done, uh, it sounds like the static fire is going to happen sometime next week. And so with that, I would assume, um, with that static fire, you know, that would be the precursor to actually launching, uh, Blue Origin New Glenn 3. And so, um, you know, based off of various sources, it seems like it's likely that Blue New— yeah, Blue Origin New Glenn 3 is going to launch sometime between March 29th to March 30th, perhaps 31st. And it's important that it happens at that time because obviously NASA just disclosed that Artemis II is targeted to launch for April 1st. And so I'd expect next week that we will see that Never Tell Me the Odds booster get rolled out to the platform to to go through static fire testing, and that could happen probably on Monday. And then after that, we will probably get a confirmation of the launch date sometime, you know, once that static fire happens. And so we have rolling out the booster sometime Monday or Tuesday, maybe the static fire happens Wednesday or Thursday, maybe even Friday, and a launch date being confirmed upon successful static firing. And so, um, next week, uh, yeah, it could be quite interesting. Um, I think as, as Cook mentioned, obviously there's, there's macro stuff going on, but, um, you know, we've now passed the Ides of March and now we're signing up for what I think is going to be, uh, a restart of the endless rally for AST, right? Because you've got, um, you've got the launch coming up that— well, the, the date being set and the launch coming up. By the end of March, you've got a batch delivery in April, and of course all the launches thereafter. You've got a potential FCC approval of our application any day now. You've got what seems to be FirstNet rolling out this website. There could be an announcement anytime now and a whole host of other things. And I think the other interesting thing, which I can't go into detail, but there are also legacy satellite providers out there that are apparently testing with AST SpaceMobile and commercial agreements could be, could, could come together. Right. And so, um, you know, that's something to look forward to as well, potentially. Um, so yeah, a lot of exciting things. I know, um, obviously the markets, you, you continue to see a pullback in risk and, and I think, you know, everyone's kind of trying to figure out if there's going to be an off-ramp for this conflict. But I truly do believe if we were not, if Iran was not happening, you know, the stock price would be probably in the $120s, $130s levels. But we're here at $87, which is not bad either considering everything, you know, the uncertainty that's around and how negatively positioned the market is, right? But you just need a small piece of good news, right? And all hell can break loose to the upside. Right. And so we've got a number of things in the hopper that could pop off and they're going to happen, right? It's inevitable. Like, and again, going back to people who are worried about timing, if you're going to deploy a dominant, unparalleled service of broadband cellular connectivity, and the other guys who are competing with you are not even close, not even in the same ballpark, right? And they're hoping to get to where you A generation from now, maybe 2 generations from now, and that's like 3 to 4, 5 years out. I mean, Globalstar, they don't have a lot of spectrum and they're leveraging MDA space to build their constellation and who knows how many changes and updates that has to go through. And this is, MDA space, they're very seasoned, right? But then they're building a new platform. And so that's going to take time and there's going to be growing pains there. And then for Starlink, they're waiting for V2 and based off of some speculation, like 150 megabits per second is actually dependent on MIMO for 2 satellites, then they're still not even there. Right. And so you, it's up to you to roll out a service that is superior. That's going to be, you know, on deployment, it's going to be right the first time, every time. And you have that luxury, you have that luxury to do it right and do it well because you have the technological edge, right? You have the overwhelming advantage. You've got patents. And so that's your moat. And you don't want to, I think for the company, and by the way, like we just raised another billion dollars, you know, we've got close to $4 billion in cash. We're going to do it right and we're going to get it right and we're not going to make mistakes. And so I think that's the key thing for people to understand. And so I'll leave it with that. So yeah, thanks everyone for joining. I hope this was helpful. The markets suck. They're going to do what they're going to do. But as I said, there's like, we've got this whole hopper full of catalysts. It's like a bunch of bottle rockets, right? And they're all, they're all there. You've got this lighter and you're about to light any number of them and they could all pop off. Maybe one, maybe two, maybe all of them at the same time. And so just be patient because it's going to happen. It's inevitable. Thanks everyone for joining.
[00:37:22] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the AST SpaceMobile Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. To catch all the latest news about AST SpaceMobile, make sure to subscribe. Thanks again, and I'll see you next time.
[00:37:42] Speaker B: We're doing something very, very And I think with this technology we can really affect a billion lives. AST SpaceMobile is the only company that has proven technology to deliver cellular mobile connectivity directly from space to the everyday smartphone. People will just basically turn on their phone and be seamless regardless of where you are. We don't want the user even to know that it's connected by satellite. Our role is to bring this into reality, always in partnership with the animals.
[00:38:20] Speaker A: Listen.
[00:38:28] Speaker C: Mmm, waffles.