AST SpaceMobile - All 3 US Carriers Now On Board

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[00:00:54] Speaker D: Hey everyone, thanks for joining. I am back from a quick family vacation, and in this I also wanted to catch up on recent news regarding AST SpaceMobile and talk about a few other topics as well. So, um, so let's see, this morning—
[00:01:17] Speaker A: Excuse me.
[00:01:20] Speaker D: Actually, let me have a sip of coffee here. This morning we had some interesting comments come out of Verizon, but maybe first I'll talk about AT&T since all 3 MNOs in the US reported this past week. First, for AT&T, John Stankey highlighted the importance of AST SpaceMobile, the relationship, and how well-positioned they are to provide satellite coverage to customers in order to achieve 100% coverage. What was interesting as well is that he revealed the CapEx savings story, and this is probably the first time I've seen an MNO talk about it very explicitly, where he mentioned that the ability to deploy satellite allows the company to then potentially decommission terrestrial towers in areas where it may not be economic. And so aside from the revenue side of the story, this is a pretty big CapEx-driven cost savings side of the story where I think for MNOs in particular, the ability to decommission uneconomic towers is going to save them quite a bit of money and drive free cash flow. And so this is part of the story that I think for whether you're an ASDS bull or a skeptic, I think it gets overlooked quite a bit by research. And so this was a pretty big nugget, which I think the market missed. But then of course, we're in this awful macro environment where I think the market really doesn't care about any of this news until things settle down. But besides that, AT&T also reiterated that they are not going to enable a virtual network operator relationship with any satellite company. And specifically, we all know that that means Starlink. And then one important thing to note when you hear these MNOs talk about satellite coverage, they'll say that it's a complementary service and that it addresses the 2% coverage that they don't have. And it's important to highlight that because for MNOs, they'll claim that they cover 98% of the population, but that's not geographic coverage. They probably cover in the US, maybe, you know, 80% of the US, but then in terms of where the population lives, they might cover 96 or 98%, but the geographic aspect of that is actually much larger. And beyond that, I think it's important to note that JR Wilson, who recently joined from AT&T, who's now at AST SpaceMobile, he talks about the 1-bar opportunity. And so with AST service and the ability to coordinate with the MNO's core network, there is this opportunity to provide stronger coverage in these areas where, or these areas that are 1 bar. So for example, if you get 1 bar coverage in a particular location, there might be the choice for AT&T to say, hey, you know what? We're not going to serve your phone with the terrestrial network because it's not giving you a strong signal. We're actually going to utilize satellite to do that. And so this is what J.R. Wilson referred to as 1 bar. And so the gray zone opportunity, which is not 2%, it's actually going to be, you know, actually I don't know the numbers. I need to research it. But my guess is that 1 bar opportunity probably is, call it 10% or 15% of where the wireless carriers provide coverage. The other thing I would point out is that for these MNOs, when they talk about satellite coverage from a marketing perspective, They can't go out and say satellite is going to cover all these dead zones that they have because that's counter to the quality of their network that they're trying to convey to consumers and also to regulators. They're always going to say we cover 98, 99% of the population, even though that coverage may not be good. And so, you know, it's— you typically wouldn't say we've got a bad service and we need satellite to make it a great service. You're going to say we've got great service and we're going to have satellite make it an exceptional service. And so there's a bit of marketing spin there. But yeah, it was really good to see John Stankey, the CEO of AT&T, put out positive comments calling out AST SpaceMobile, you know, very specifically about their strategy and how they feel good about it. It's also important to note that AT&T is the lead MNO for AST SpaceMobile in the US. Through the historic relationship and the current agreements, there are restrictions in AST working with another provider. So whether that's Verizon or T-Mobile. However, because of John Stankey's view of how the strategic landscape was going to evolve, he removed that restriction. So it allowed AST to then work with Verizon, and AT&T invited Verizon into the working relationship. Where they paired both of their 850 MHz spectrum to provide a better service. And that extends also to this new joint venture where AT&T is quarterbacking that. And because of AT&T's willingness or openness, and they see the competitive threat of Starlink, they are inviting T-Mobile into that joint venture to then work with AST SpaceMobile. And so AT&T, very important earnings call this past week where they reiterated their commitment to the JV. And it sounds like from other comments, it sounds like that JV is going to be the definitive long-form agreement is going to be announced soon. Moving on to Verizon. So this morning, Dan Schulman, in that call, there were very specific comments around And so first of all, he mentioned that satellite Starlink to home service, they don't see a big competitive impact and they feel good about their fixed wireless and fiber product today. And then he reiterated the commitment to the joint venture with AT&T and Verizon and T-Mobile. And then he specifically called out that they are not going to enable an MVNO relationship, and obviously that's directed towards Starlink. He proactively answered this saying that, you know, there's been speculation out there that perhaps there's a backdoor way to get an MVNO relationship. And so what he means by that is there's been some speculation that perhaps SpaceX could buy Charter, which has an MVNO relationship with Verizon. But here he very specifically shut that down saying that there's no backdoor ability to gain an MVNO relationship. And so this is important that there's been some questions out there on the street as to whether Starlink, it's SpaceX, could go buy one of these MVNOs and then get access through that relationship to Verizon, T-Mobile, or AT&T. And very specifically here, Verizon said there's no ability to do that. And so Related to this, there was some speculation that perhaps if SpaceX were to buy EchoStar's Boost Mobile, that maybe by doing so they could get access. But again, here Verizon shut that down. Let's see. So moving on to T-Mobile. So there were some interesting comments from the CEO there. Again, I think it's important to put all these things into context. And so this joint venture between AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. Once it goes definitive and they announce it, it actually has to go through a regulatory review. And so when the comments make— when CEOs make comments about the competitive landscape, they have to be very careful in terms of what they're saying because obviously regulators are going to look at that with a very fine-tooth comb and see if there's anything anti-competitive about this joint venture. And so until the joint venture is announced and receives ultimate regulatory approval, they've gotta be careful, right? And so I think, and I've said this before, I think T-Mobile will continue to support T-Satellite powered by Starlink for the foreseeable future and even beyond, you know, after the joint venture is announced and they start working with AST SpaceMobile. I would assume that they will still offer T-Satellite as a separate service that people can opt into. But it's not something that's going to be front and center that they are marketing heavily towards users. But yeah, similarly to what AT&T said before, T-Mobile talked down satellite usage. They said that, I think it represented a fraction of 1% of network traffic. But I think it's important to take these comments into context given that One, Starlink service is terrible. And 2, it's not something— if you're offering intermittent texting, which is very low-use data, and Starlink in and of itself is a narrowband service, then the percentage of traffic relative to terrestrial traffic over your towers is going to be very small, right? So service is bad, and then it's also limited in bandwidth. So that number by definition is going to be small. But I think it's important to note that once AST provides a broadband service for these 3 carriers, the utilization is actually going to be pretty high because obviously you're servicing all 3 carriers and it's going to be broadband, right? But even then, you don't want too much traffic on satellite network because that That, you know, the economic attractiveness of the service that AST is using is that, or providing, is that it's not going to be something that, for example, you're watching Netflix on, right? It's not something that you're using at home, but it's going to be for edge use cases when you're out of coverage or you're in a 1-bar zone and you're going to use it intermittently, but you're going to pay a premium for it, right? And that's, you know, that's the whole idea of Mobility and the premium you pay on that data is the whole point, right? So for example, if you were to extend the logic of what T-Mobile said yesterday, the percentage of terrestrial network traffic versus traffic over Wi-Fi at your home is going to be much smaller, right? It's my guess is that when you're out and about, you might use, or in any given day, you might use your cellular network plan maybe 5% of the time, And 95% of the time you're using broadband either through your home Wi-Fi or at work, but you pay a premium for that access. And so, you know, for example, I think we pay $40 for Spectrum, 500 megabits access here in New York, but then I pay for our wireless plans well over, you know, almost $300 for all the devices that we have for that small percentage of time that we're not on the Wi-Fi network or on, you know, some, you know, the office network or whatever it is, right? And so similarly, when we are out in the Hamptons or skiing upstate, I'm going to pay that premium to get access to 100% coverage. And especially for, as we've talked about before, for families, that is invaluable. Like, I will pay that premium. It's just like paying insurance premium for your car or anything else. I need peace of mind that The kids will have access and that I'll be able to find them through their Apple Watch or whatever device they're using. So yeah, I think it's important for these executives, especially with Starlink breathing down their neck and people knocking the doors down and analysts asking these questions, they're going to talk down the need for satellite, but then And of course they're going to say this in the face of regulators too, that this is not something that is competitively that disruptive. But once the JV's in place, once they have the agreement signed, once they're able to market it, they're going to go full out, right? They're going to say this is a transformational service. It really, we're serving US customers. It's 100% coverage in the US. It's going to be something that they're going to market heavily, right? And I think it's important to kind of notice the shift in language from the MNOs because on the one hand, they're kind of talking down the service because it's in their interest to, right? They obviously aren't going to tell customers that their network is bad. They're going to say it's great. And then this coverage is going to make it even better, right? It's going to be something that they can, you know, once they tout this service, then it's something that they'll they'll hope to push in order to drive higher subscription prices, right? Like, because they're going to charge you more for it. But it was interesting where T-Mobile specifically said satellite coverage is going to be table stakes. It's not going to be optional, right? And so we've gone from a world where the skeptics and the bears said, oh, it's a niche market, it doesn't really matter, to now the CEO of T-Mobile saying, oh, it's table stakes. So at a minimum, In order to serve customers, you need to have satellite coverage, right? In order to say you have 100% coverage geographically. And so we've gone from, for AST, this is really important because we've gone from what people, the skeptics have termed a niche service to something, and that we're only going to serve AT&T, one-third of the US market, to now, okay, we've got AT&T and Verizon, and we're about to get T-Mobile. So we're serving 100% of the US market. And for the rest of the world, that also applies, right? Because MNOs globally look to the US MNOs for leadership and will mirror what they do. And so now we've moved from an interesting add-on niche service to table stakes. And so even though You know, there's this marketing balance that the MNOs have to, you know, they have to manage. Now we're talking about something where it's a critical service, it's table stakes. And so, yeah, I think that's a very interesting nugget that people haven't really focused on, but we've gone from now something that is required, right? And if it's a required service and we're the only player that's doing it, servicing the, you know, having 100% market share in the US. Of course, you know, there will be Starlink and they'll have some percentage, but let's just say an effective market share of, I don't know, 90%. What is that worth? To me, that's worth quite a bit, right? And of course, you know, there's been some pushback of, you know, if maybe this is a buying cartel, the joint venture, and they'll put, they'll pressure prices, pricing down. But in reality, If you're a strategic counter to Starlink, you're not going to starve that partner of capital that it needs to grow the business and provide an ongoing, not just Block 2, Block 3, Block 4, Block 5 satellites. You're going to want to keep that innovation engine going, right? And so the last thing you want to do is starve it of capital. And so you're going to enter into beyond, once the economic agreements with AT&T and Verizon expire and you have to re-up those, you're going to put something similarly favorable in place in order for that business to grow. So yeah, I think that's a very important aspect that, you know, once we get through this market malaise, people will start figuring out that, oh yeah, this makes a ton of economic sense and it's very attractive and oh, this is a good investment. But let's see, so Going back to what Timo was saying, there were a few things that I think surprised people, including myself. So let's talk about exclusivity. So Elon Musk specifically talked about a 1-year exclusivity where beyond, after that 1 year, then Starlink would be able to go sell its service to AT&T and Verizon. And so the 1-year anniversary was July 23rd, right? So it's 1 year post-launch date. And so I think most people, including myself, were a bit surprised when the CEO of T-Mobile said that exclusivity would continue beyond this year. And so what does that mean? So I think as going back to what I was saying before, you know, in order to get the joint venture approved with regulators, perhaps, I don't know, the T-Mobile CEO was saying that, Just to be, from a competitive standpoint, to kind of help the approval process. But I think more importantly, it's probably related to certain aspects of their agreement. And so what do I mean by that? Exclusivity can be a number of things. It can be one-way or it could be mutually exclusive. One-way meaning maybe Starlink might have exclusivity to sell its service to T-Mobile for 1 year, but then after that, it can sell to other carriers, which is clearly the case. But then exclusivity for T-Mobile would mean that they were locked into Starlink for beyond that 1-year period of time. Now, it could be exclusivity pertaining to certain rights, so it could be certain spectrum frequencies. Obviously, Starlink needs T-Mobile's 1900 MHz PCSG block in order to operate. There's 5 MHz by 5 MHz, which they've allocated specifically to Starlink. There's no other traffic on that spectrum. And so Starlink may have entered into some exclusive agreement with T-Mobile to use that for, I don't know, 2, 3 years. And so that's what the CEO could be referring to. There could also be certain service types, meaning exclusivity, Related to T-Satellite, or it could be certain phones. Who knows, right? But that was a confusing comment from the CEO of T-Mobile, which from what I understand, after speaking with industry folks and doing a bit more digging, from what I understand, there's nothing today that precludes T-Mobile from working with AST SpaceMobile. And so, you know, could that be directly working with each other? That's certainly possible. Also, this joint venture, from what I understand, the way it's structured, T-Mobile will be contributing cash, intellectual property, and certain spectrum bands. And of course, AT&T is quarterbacking the joint venture. And so in that joint venture agreement, there is this ability potentially for T-Mobile to bypass Starlink and work with AST through its relationship with AT&T and Verizon. And so there's a number of kind of ways to do this. I don't know exactly what exclusivity is left for T-Mobile and Starlink, but again, I'll just reiterate, there's nothing today that precludes T-Mobile from working with AST SpaceMobile. And so, you know, I think it's important to go back to what I was saying before, where AT&T is quarterbacking this joint venture. AST is kind of their centerpiece of strategically countering Starlink. And by Verizon, of course, they're already working with AST and AT&T, but with T-Mobile joining, it's very clear what is unfolding here, right? And I think once we do see this definitive agreement announcement for the JV. A key tell will be if T-Mobile does not contribute the PCSG block spectrum, because my guess is that Starlink has some exclusivity on that for some period of time. But the key tell will be if they contribute any spectrum between 600 to 900 megahertz and then any spectrum, mid-band spectrum beyond the PCSG block. But specifically for the low-band spectrum, if you see that, that means very clearly that they are working with AST because again, there's no satellite providers that can service that spectrum. It's just AST. So those are some of my comments on the MNOs. By the way, if you have any questions, feel free to drop them in the comments and then I'll try to address them. I did want to move on to this Abel tweet, which I was on vacation when it happened and There's a lot to unpack there. And so—
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[00:23:42] Speaker D: So yeah, Abel tweeted when when we had successful deployment of Bluebirds eight, nine, ten, and then of course eleven, twelve, and thirteen were delivered. He he came out and tweeted this very bullish tweet. He doesn't. I would say that the company and Abel are. they typically don't, they're not big promoters, right? Like I think one of the biggest criticisms of the company is that they're not like the guys at Rocket Lab or some of these other companies that will PR a multitude of things. And I don't know, it's just the DNA. Some people have known this one anecdote that I had where their I think it was for BlueWalker 3 launch specifically. I was talking to one of the board members and I was saying, oh, you know, it'd be great if the company would be more outward in its marketing and PR. And then this board member was saying, you know, that Abel at heart is an engineer and it's all about execution for him. And they're not going to be overpromotional about things or promotional about things. I won't say overpromotional, but— But this tweet was pretty promotional because I think the company feels very good about where it is right now. Very specifically, a few things that stood out for me. Obviously the big one was Abel talking about the Bluebirds being a radar phased array, which is probably one of the first times where he's been— I mean, they've talked about it on earnings calls, but here he was explicit in print saying radar. And so they must feel very good about Where they are in the process around Golden Dome and some of these defense applications. He also talked about the satellite being a platform for many uses. One is space edge AI computing and then mission-critical government applications. And so yeah, I mean, that was a quite bullish statement from my perspective, just talking about the dual use case. And really, this is, you know, we've known about mission-critical government applications where, you know, you look at the 10 different defense use cases, and then on top of that, you have, of course, FirstNet, first responder network, you know, disaster recovery, resiliency, all that stuff. But then this space edge AI computing reference was new. And so I think as we've speculated for many months, the satellite the spacecraft, and I'll talk about that in a second, but the satellite itself is an architecture that you could easily swap out the ASICs and FPGAs for TPUs and GPUs if you wanted to do computing out in space. And so that was the first time that I've seen Abel talk about it explicitly. I know Scott has kind of hinted at it at investment conferences, maybe it was like one or two, But I think this is the first time I've seen Abel actually refer to it, which is great. Let's see. So another thing that was disclosed here was the ability to stack 3, 5, 6, or 8 Bluebirds. This is very specific, I think, to certain launch platforms. So obviously for Falcon 9, that would be 3. For MHI, that would be 3. For Ariane and Vulcan, Ariane 6 and Vulcan, that would be 5. And then for the 6 or 8 configuration, or 6 would also be Ariane 6 as well. But then for the 6 or 8 configuration, that's probably obviously, you know, Blue Origin New Glenn, but then 6 also could refer to Relativity once that vehicle is up and running. But, but that, that was an interesting use of numbers. We didn't see a reference to number, you know, 4 stacked, but it was 3, 5, 6, or 8. So there's very specific platforms that that's applicable to. So another hint of things to come. And let's see, so peak data rates of 200 megabits per second. The company has talked about this before. I think they've achieved in the disclosure for the Bluebird 7 launch, Abel talked about 140 or 160 megabits per second, which is what my guess is what they're achieving with Bluebird 6. And 200 is kind of their goal in the near term for the Block 2 platform. And so it was nice to see a reiteration of that. And of course, as people know, on Block 1, which is the previous generation of satellites, we achieved 98 megabits per second or 98.3 or whatever it was. And so, yeah, it was good to see a performance KPI disclosed there or a goal for them. And then finally, you know, talking about Bluebirds 11, 12, and 13 being delivered and prepped for launch, from what I understand, I think we should expect a launch date soon. I would think that, you know, something along the lines of August 5th, 6th, or 7th, somewhere around there is likely. I know someone had posted a net August first potential, but but yeah, I would expect it to be at least in those first seven days of August. And then of course, you know, Bluebirds fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen ready to ship soon. And so here we're seeing the cadence pick up on production. I and Cassie had put together a nice chart of of satellites that are ready, which I think we're now up to what forty-two, which is up from just a few days ago of Is it 39? But I am going to try to update the chart that I did of the total square footage of phased array out deployed in space and what's coming. But yeah, now we're seeing this ramp up of production cadence and launch, which eventually, once again, the market settles down, I think, and people get their arms around it, these are all positive events for the company. And anyway, ending on a final note, I did want to talk about the SpaceX Falcon 9 speculation. And so, well, first of all, I can say pretty confidently that the company has bought additional Falcon 9 launches. I don't know how much they'll disclose in the upcoming quarter, but as we all know, or at least most of us know, the company is under some communications restrictions around what they can say around When they're launching and how many launches they have with SpaceX, because that's just part of their multi-launch agreement. But they have bought additional launch and then they're obviously looking to enter into MLAs with additional providers as well. But there was an article overnight from Bloomberg talking about how they're getting some communications from various sources that SpaceX is looking to wind down the number of launches it has for rideshares. And then I think also dedicated for Falcon 9 heading into the 2028 and beyond timeframe. And for me, this seems pretty natural for anyone who, you know, I think there were some concerns from people that, oh my gosh, Falcon 9 is going to be off the market and where are people going to pick up capacity? There's this thing called Starship, right?
[00:31:12] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:31:12] Speaker D: And so I think it's just natural for SpaceX. Obviously, you know, they feel confident in Starship and for anyone who is bearish on Starship, the fact that they're looking to wind down reservations on Falcon 9 should tell you that they feel at least internally pretty good about it. But yeah, eventually when Falcon or when Starship is operational, there's probably not as much reason to keep Falcon 9 around right now. Now, obviously, Falcon 9 will still be used for government, NASA, and you always want to keep that program going as a fallback. But I think they're going to try to move as much commercial cargo to Starship as possible, right? Because that just makes economic sense. Now, it is probably part of a marketing ploy and also internally, it sounds like there's They're going to wind down as much production of Falcon 9, but my guess is that they're going to keep it around, right? And I think for, if you're a SpaceX shareholder, the last thing you want to see is winding down of Falcon 9. You probably want to keep it around because who knows how long it's going to take for Starship to get to your commercial cadence. And so I think, you know, you're starting to hear some, some like some of this noise from, SpaceX because they want to move customers over to Starship and they're prepping the market for that. But until we actually see Starship actually viable and on commercial cadence, I would assume if SpaceX is telling people 2028, that perhaps it's going to get pushed back even further. And so this is just kind of a natural thing, right? Like, I think the market feels Uneasy about it because obviously Starship is not at a commercial cadence. And so any idea of Falcon 9 eventually getting wound down is a scary thought, but they're not going to wind it down until Starship is up and running. And just remember that a vast majority of Falcon 9 launches are to support Starlink, right? And so Starlink eventually V3 for fixed wireless and V2 for direct-to-cell, that's all going to move to Starship. And so the need to run Falcon 9 as frequently is going to go down tremendously, right? Because they're not going to launch any Starlink satellites on Falcon 9 once Starship is up and running. So naturally you're going to not launch as many Falcon 9s at some point in the future. And then on top of that, if you look at the launch market, Around that timeframe, that's when you're going to have a flood of medium launch vehicles coming into the market, right? So whether that's Rocket Lab with Neutron, it's Blue Origin with 7x2 or 9x4. 9x4 obviously is more competitive with Starship, but then you've got Relativity Vulcan. We've seen them, they're increasing cadence for next year. pretty significantly. And then Mitsubishi, I think Japan has talked about getting up to 30 launches a year. And so by the time you get to 2028, 2029, I think SpaceX is probably looking at the competitive landscape and thinking, okay, well, you know, the market's going to be pretty crowded. So we're going to try to shift more of our resources and focus on Starship, which is, I mean, if you look at like Blue Origin, that's kind of what they did with New Glenn and New Shepard, where they had to shift resources from New Shepard to focus on lunar landing, right? And so these companies, while large, don't have a— there's a finite amount of operational and engineering talent. And so you've got to focus on where the action's going to be. And so I think the company's just prepping for that. But in terms of how it might impact AC, well, we've bought Dedicated launches. We're not, we haven't been a rideshare customer since BlueWalker 3. And then going forward, you know, we've bought down launches with SpaceX and we are going to utilize other launchers. I think the company's expectations over the long run is that Blue Origin and some of these other providers are going to be successful, and by then they're not going to need as many Falcon 9 launches. But, you know, we'll see. As we've, as I've said before, space is hard. If Starship doesn't get to commercial cadence near to medium term, then Falcon 9 is going to be on the menu and it's going to continue its service. But if Starship becomes successful and gets to commercial cadence, then for all, you know, for all intents and purposes, why would SpaceX keep Falcon 9 at the same launch rate as it does now? So those are my thoughts there. But Um, let me just look, see if anyone has questions. Let's see. Price action is actually frustrating me. Do you have any short-term expectations? SpaceX squeeze? Uh, I don't have any short-term expectations right now. Um, the market sucks. Uh, it is what it is. You've got some expectations around inflation, um, you know, being sticky, of course. And then I— the Iran conflict, I mean, who knows how to handicap that. I think we're now at this point where things could get worse, or maybe there's some type of peace agreement or interim peace. But I think that's probably what is driving the market right now. And obviously, if it's not just AST, if you own any high-beta growth names, everything is down pretty significantly over the last you know, few months. And so yes, it's very frustrating. I myself rarely get frustrated, but I've been, while on vacation, I was pretty frustrated at recent price action. But, you know, I go back to reminding myself what is going to transpire for this company in the next few weeks, months, years. And then that always brings me back to sanity where it's like, oh, I know what I own and I'm very bullish. I'm okay with this. In the near term, stock price movements are noise, but the company is well positioned. And yeah, when the market does get back to some footing of rationality, it will be reflected in the stock price. And so I'm okay with that. Let's see, here's a question. Have you seen any speculation how many sats AST could stack in Starship? With their composite stacking, how many? I think you're probably looking at, in terms of weight, probably 14 to 16 is my guess. But maybe that configuration would be, if it's, it could be 4 stacks of, I mean, actually I need to look at the Starship fairing, but my guess is like maybe a dozen, right? Maybe more. But who knows? I mean, it's going to be a long time before we go about flying on Starship. Let's see. Any comments around T-Mobile CEO mentioning that T-Mobile and Starlink— okay, I already covered that. For those that didn't hear me, go back on the recording. You can hear, I think T-Mobile exclusivity may be may pertain to certain aspects of that relationship. For example, the spectrum that Starlink is using, there could be some exclusivity period around that. But from what I understand, T-Mobile is not restricted from entering into a working relationship or partnership with AST as of today. Yeah, so I'll leave it there. Let's see. Can you explain how you expect the JV to work? Does it obviate the need for a direct management— direct agreement with AST and T-Mobile? How would AST get paid? I'm not sure. Ultimately, the JV I think is a coordination between the MNOs, but they still have their direct commercial agreements with AST, and I expect that to continue. However, I think what the JV enables is a better working relationship coordination between the MNOs where they can pull spectrum, they can pull infrastructure resources, and then there is this ability to jointly purchase satellite access, I guess. And so unclear, I'm not sure how it's going to ultimately work, but we'll find out soon. Let's see. How long do you expect low-volume market to stay this way? Could Wall Street be back in August to start buying in? Yeah, I think we're probably in for, I mean, it's been a pretty quiet summer in terms of volumes. It's probably going to stay that way until, and part of it is due to all this uncertainty and the macro, with macro around Iran and rates and inflation. But yeah, maybe we start to see a pickup towards August. Now obviously there's people in Europe are away for August and people in the US are still on vacation, but I think just given the number of catalysts that are coming out for AST, it'll be hard to ignore. Let's see, do we know any details about 14, 15, 16 launch timing? Is it Falcon 9?
[00:40:57] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:40:58] Speaker D: Yeah. So 14, 15, and 16 launch timing, we'll see. You know, I think now we are on this data point of, I think it takes 3, approximately 3 weeks to integrate 3 Block 2 satellites into Falcon 9 fairing. And you do that ahead of launch. So when we see 14, 15, 16 being shipped, then you can assume that—
[00:41:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:41:24] Speaker D: you know, the Falcon 9 launch is going to be a handful weeks after that, 3, 4 weeks after that.
[00:41:29] Speaker E: Let's see.
[00:41:35] Speaker D: Okay, those, that seemed to be the questions that I had. But yeah, those are my thoughts. I'm glad to be back. I wish it were under better circumstances. The market continues to be shaky here. Space has been getting hammered. But yeah, I mean, we recently saw the US pass a digital budget for, which is going to be positive on the defense side for space companies. And so while I guess, you know, maybe this overhang with SpaceX continues to drag down the sector, yeah, the fundamentals keep improving. I mean, I saw for Rocket Lab, for example, additional contract awards and and the stock continues to move down. So it's not just AST, it's all these other companies as well. And so we're kind of in this factor malaise where the sector's going to trade like it is until things stabilize. But in the meantime, just stay focused on fundamentals, which are improving for the company. And again, the comments out of Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, all very positive and bullish. And so Yeah, I'm looking forward to the next few weeks here. And just to reiterate, I'll be at launch. Fortunately, our kids are away, going to be away for sleepaway camp. So I'll be able to make it to launch if it's that first week of August. But anyway, that's all I had for today. Hope everyone is doing well and we'll talk again soon. Take care.
[00:43:06] Speaker E: Hi, it's Redrum here. Before we wrap up, I want to hear from you. I've left a pinned comment down below asking: The T-Mobile CEO said satellite coverage is now table stakes, not optional. We've gone from niche service to required infrastructure in one earnings cycle. How does that change your valuation of AST? Head down to the comments and drop your take. I'll be reading through all your replies.
[00:43:50] Speaker C: 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.
[00:44:15] Speaker B: Listen.
[00:44:15] Speaker D: Mmm, waffles.
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