Anpanman - The Great Carrier Realignment

[00:00:07] Speaker A: This is the AST SpaceMobile Podcast.
[00:00:10] 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.
[00:00:27] Speaker C: Everyone, thanks for joining. I couldn't help myself. I got to do another space and my friends are waiting for me. So I'm in Vegas and instead of having fun, I'm like thinking about this transaction and yeah, just, just still beside myself that it actually happened. But I did want to just follow up on the space earlier today just to summarize real quick before I add some additional thoughts. For those that haven't seen, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile announced a joint venture today where they're going to try to pool resources, including spectrum, in order to provide a better direct-to-device service to consumers. And as part of that, in this press release, they specifically talk about pooling resources and working together. They're obviously, they I think they have an agreement in principle, but they haven't hashed out the actual definitive agreement yet. Obviously it'll be subject to DOJ and FCC approval, but for all intents and purposes, it seems like this thing's going to move forward. They made it open-ended because they obviously don't want to seem to be anti-competitive. You know, they, this entity will face off towards satellite providers and and integrate and negotiate a service. But I think it's important to understand that in the context of, let's say for example, AST SpaceMobile, I know there's some people who perhaps skeptics are there saying, oh, maybe this will crush margins. One thing this joint venture can't do is set prices, right? Because that's actually anti-competitive. And so if there's any idea that this joint venture is going to somehow browbeat Satellite providers into a certain price, that's actually illegal. So just keep that in mind. And there's obviously in this press release, it doesn't say anything in that regard. But taking a step back, this press release came from AT&T, and it was written and drafted by AT&T, and then it has quotes from Verizon and T-Mobile similar to Vodafone Satco JV, where they announced the formation of that. And then you had quotes from a few other carriers, Orange, Telefonica in Europe, and obviously that excluded Deutsche Telekom, which interestingly, and by the way, some of the comments I'll make today include some color from management. And also Scott Wisniewski just did a call with investors at Deutsche Bank. And so, you know, there'll be some nuggets from there too. But But yeah, this press release came from AT&T, and as we all know, AT&T has been working very closely. They are the primary US MNO, and the investors sit on the board, but they're very close to AST SpaceMobile. And this press release came from them. They are the quarterback. The junior partners are Verizon and now T-Mobile. And so AT&T is the one who's leading network integration, deploying service. And for all intents and purposes, like we're talking very specifically about AST SpaceMobile. This has nothing to do with Starlink. This has nothing to do with Globalstar. I think it's important if you take a step back, you know, there's some skeptics out there. For example, I'll just show you like how convoluted and crazy people are. Tim Farrar tweeted 4 hours ago, I'll just read this exactly. The AT&T Verizon T-Mobile JV for D2D is clearly designed to present a united front in any negotiation to make use of Starlink's next generation system. But it emphasizes multiple players and is in addition to existing arrangements. Like, in what world is it like, what is this guy smoking? Like, how can he make that proclamation when in fact we know the opposite is true? I will say that my conversations with management, they were well aware of this JV going on. They were, I don't know to what extent they can disclose, like how much are they part of it, but Clearly by AT&T sending the press release out and then the company simultaneously sending their press release out, it's unequivocally like you can't deny that they're working together. And I was told by the company that T-Mobile, and this was said actually at Deutsche Bank, T-Mobile wanted to join and become part of this service.
[00:04:50] Speaker B: Right?
[00:04:51] Speaker C: And so I think it's important because like this press release today and this formation of the joint venture, they're not excluding anybody. They're not going to exclude Starlink proactively. They're not going to exclude Globalstar, all these things. But the only service that is broadband usable is AST. And in order to get through regulators, they're not going to tell regulators like, we're excluding Starlink or all these other things. But Will Townsend specifically said in the lead up to this, he was briefed on it clearly. And by the way, some of the mainstream media like Investor Business Daily, when talking to some of the smarter street analysts, like they in Roth Capital today, for example, everyone knows that the MNOs are threatened by Starlink. And so this joint venture is to develop something that is going to be, that's going to pull common spectrum. It's going to have 850 megahertz Eventually, the spectrum that's being contributed by AT&T and Verizon to ASD, that will, my assumption, will fall under this JV eventually after the mutual exclusivity ends. And then AT&T's, or sorry, T-Mobile's going to have to come to the party with something. They're going to have to come with terrestrial spectrum, that's, or cellular spectrum, probably something in the low band. And this is an important differentiation. These other competitors like Starlink and Globalstar, They're all MSS, they're all mid-band spectrum, but they don't have coverage. They don't have low-band threshold spectrum. There's only one satellite company that is doing that today, and that's AST SpaceMobile. Now there's a smaller company called Lynk, which has had a really difficult time getting off the ground, and architecturally they're just not going to get there. They also use low-band spectrum, but yeah, they're They're not scalable. I mean, there's a whole host of reasons why that service is not going to make it. And it's similar in architecture to Starlink in that the eNodeBs in within the satellite, the phased array is tiny. By the way, like this is the company including Starlink too, Link and Starlink were like, hey, we can create small satellites and provide the same level of service. And then guess what? They all like are throwing that plan away and they're all trying to move towards larger phased arrays because as I see Katzy out in the crowd there, as we all know, large phased array makes more efficient use of spectrum and is able to deliver a cleaner signal to your phone. So yeah, the press release today, which simultaneously AST put their press release out as well, like these bears out there who are FUDing saying that somehow this is related to Starlink. It's not. It's absolutely— this JV is all about AST, and I guess it is related to Starlink in a sense that Starlink is a real threat It's a real threat. Elon Musk has made no— he hasn't hidden his ambitions of becoming a wireless carrier. And what I think was the accelerant for this joint venture, which the timing's very interesting, right? So Elon Musk got approval to buy EchoStar spectrum. And the interesting thing that came out of that approval is a watershed event for the industry, right? It's the first time that build-out requirements for terrestrial spectrum, just remember like AWS-3 is approved for terrestrial use, cellular use, that spectrum, the build-out requirements are now, they can now be met by satellite, which has never been the case before in the history of wireless, the wireless industry. And so that has huge implications. Like if you're, imagine if you're Charlie Ergen and you bought all the spectrum back in the day, you try to create a new wireless competitor, And the FCC said, you've got to build out that spectrum to cover 50% of the population in 3 years and 70% of the population in 4 years. And so on and so forth. The issue with Charlie Ergen is like he ran outta money and he couldn't get there, right? And so he kept asking for extensions. Then eventually the FCC said, hey, you guys aren't going to get there. I'm going to take this spectrum away from you. And he got forced to sell the company. Lo and behold, then SpaceX buys it and says, hey, we're going to light the spectrum up. Granted, SpaceX is a more credible party. that can do that, the FCC comes back and says, hey, you know what? We're changing the rules. When you buy terrestrial spectrum, we're going to allow you to have this hybrid approach where in urban areas you have to use towers, but in areas where it's not dense, you can satisfy the requirement by deploying satellite service of a certain speed, which by the way, SpaceX won't get there for, I think Katsi said another 9 years or 10 years, which is what AST SpaceMobile actually can meet that requirement today, but you can use satellite to light up that spectrum and meet your buildout requirements. And so Charlie Ergen, he's probably livid because he kind of found out too late because remember he tried to deploy a direct-to-device service, but it was too late. But he could have worked with AST, I guess, if AT&T, in partnership with AT&T, and they could have lit up that spectrum, you could have held onto it. But this is a game changer for MNOs. Imagine like in the future, instead of building out towers in suburban areas, and also think about decommissioning towers that cost $100,000 to $200,000 to operate a year, you can now meet your requirements for coverage with satellite. Forget about dead zones. Like, let's talk about zones where there's not many people or there's not a quantum of people that make it economic. Like, this is a game changer, right? And so now AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, they can go back to the FCC and say, hey, look, you know, you approved SpaceX's build-out requirements, Starlink, by just saying that they could have a certain amount of satellite coverage at a certain speed. What if you ease your requirements for coverage for us? Like, we're going to start pulling back on some of our towers. And when AT&T goes deploy, I got to look and see the order. I think that was given to AT&T is that they've got to build up the 600 megahertz spectrum that they bought from EchoStar, they gotta build that out quickly. But if I, if I'm AT&T and I saw that order, I'd say, well, hold on a second. You, you said EchoStar could meet the obligations by satellite. I got this guy called AST SpaceMobile. Like, I can light it up and meet the obligation too that way. And so this, this opens up like a whole can of like possibility for satellite providers, right? Because now you're a CapEx saving machine. Like cost synergies are tremendous, right? And as Cathie pointed out, like spectrum, because it can be more deployed efficiently in a cost-effective manner, like it becomes more valuable, right? Because if you can deploy a resource that is going to generate, I don't know, let's just say I deploy a resource that generates a dollar of value and it costs me 50 cents to go deploy it, and maybe I value that at 10 bucks. What if that, what if it, for that dollar of revenue, or let's say because of satellite, I'm able to actually extract $1.20 of value out of that. And the cost to deploy it actually goes from $0.50 to $0.30. So is that spectrum worth $10 or is it worth $15? It's probably worth $15, right? Because your profit margin just went up. And so that's why this is like so transformative. This is why this JV, the timing of it, it came for a reason. Like after SpaceX got approval for EchoStar, which I think was a big surprise to everybody. They're like, wow, they got approval that quickly from the FCC? And of course, AT&T got thrown a bone and then AST2 is part of it. My guess is like they approved their constellation. So keep in mind, like AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, these are like CEO-level discussions for the 3 companies to work together. And they are now, they've agreed in principle to work together. They've got to obviously memorialize that into a definitive agreement. But this is huge. Like, for the people who are, who poopoo direct-to-device as a market, like, these are carriers saying this market is so important and it's going to drive so much growth and value for us that we're going to pull our resources together and make sure we do it right. Like, that's so, you know, the cognitive dissonance of like, okay, the carriers think this is like the best thing since sliced bread. And yet these like, financial analysts and industry consultants say the market isn't it.
[00:13:06] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:13:06] Speaker C: Yeah. Like they point to T-Mobile, the uptake for T-Satellite isn't that great and the economics aren't great. Well, first of all, Starlink takes 80 cents of the dollar that they charge customers and T-Mobile only gets 20 cents. So yeah, the economics stink because Starlink's taking all of it. But then on top of that, the service sucks. It's a piece of shit. Like it's SOS messaging, texting, it's not broadband. And so if you're a consumer, like why would you pay for texting? Like you get that free from Apple and Globalstar. What I want as a person who values my time and needs to be connected and my family, like if I'm, it was funny, there was an Amazon commercial and this is important because this is a highlight of the future. There was an Amazon commercial of this guy in a camping tent with his daughters and he's like, And he took a picture of his skin and he's like using AI to analyze what kind of rash it is and it's poison ivy and it's Amazon touting their medical services and AI. But I was watching that and I was saying to myself like, okay, that's really interesting, but how is that phone connected? Like they're out in nowhere camping. How is that phone doing AI diagnostics of this guy's rash? It has to be connected by satellite. And of course that's Amazon sees that and they're trying to like, they're going to eventually try to make Globalstar that connectivity. But that Amazon use case and that commercial does not work without AST SpaceMobile. And that's the holy grail, right? Because like people forget that the money, the amount of money that I'm going to pay for a gigabyte of data in the absence of any service, like if I'm in a place and there's no connectivity, I'm going to pay a premium. It's just like when I get on a plane, I mean, nowadays like some planes are offering it for free, but if I'm out skiing and I need to see stock prices of, you know, AST SpaceMobile, maybe I'm like trading around some options or something, I need connectivity. I can't wait for 20 to 30 minutes of intermittent, like low band connectivity. I want broadband. I want to see what's going on. I want to see stock price charts. I want to see news. I want, like, if you are a remote worker and you're on Zoom, imagine like you're on vacation and you're, you know, you want to be connected, And yet you can't, I mean, everyone's had that experience, right? Like you're gonna pay whether it's part of your monthly plan or you're gonna pay a day pass in order to make that happen. And if it's your professional job that's online or if you're a salesperson, it's important to get a deal done, you're gonna pay, right? And texting SOS messaging, it's not gonna cut it. You can't do Zoom over that, right? Or you can't do FaceTime or you can't do audio calls. And if you're a doctor and someone contacts you, maybe it's one of your patients and they need some assistance, like you're going to need to see the X-rays, right? I mean, I went through this with my son who fractured his wrist. Like they're going to need to see X-rays and write a proper diagnosis, right? And so this, you know, it's important that there's only one provider today that can do broadband. And that provider is AST and it's deploying its constellation. It's the only one that's using low-band cellular spectrum. No one else is doing that. Everyone else is basically using MSS, right? And Starlink, somebody had pointed this out today, which I didn't really, hit me until they pointed it out, but Starlink is about to go public. They were on the roadshow. It's been happening kind of informally now, but kicking off full swing and deal's going to price in June. The carriers are, I mean, T-Mobile, like what would want— the timing is uncanny, right? Because like their exclusivity with SpaceX and Starlink ends in June/July, right? And so, you know, this is, and by the way, this is kind of like, this is fait accompli. I don't see the cat's out of the bag. Like T-Mobile is pretty much saying like, we're walking from Starlink with this, right? They might continue to service to some extent, But someone had asked like, why don't they just announce it after the fact? And it's like, well, you have to, you can't have no service if the exclusivity ends and Starlink catches wind of this and they yank service from you. You can't leave people hanging, right? And so the way that T-Mobile's going to market this, they're going to say, oh, you know, T-Satellite, we're expanding it. It's going to include AST SpaceMobile service. And by the way, like these 2 things can actually run together. They're not going to run— T-Mobile's not going to— or sorry, Starlink's not going to run great. But AST, just like for AT&T and Verizon, once it's integrated into the network core and you have a seamless handoff and all the menu of the packages that you're going to provide to your customers, it can be all customized like that. Once AST's integrated, it's going to be— some people talk about competitive dynamics years from now, it's gonna be hard to remove AST, right? Because it's gonna be such a critical piece of infrastructure today. Someone said, there was an investor question to Scott asking, well, what happens like if you get all 3 working with AST, can't they beat them up on price? And Scott's point was like, this is a growth driver for these MNOs. Like this is an exciting new product. The last thing you want to do is be petty and beat up AST over price because ultimately, they're trying to generate more revenue and as long as AST grows, they grow, right? And this is not about trying to drive cost savings. This is about growing your TAM and building a growth business, right? And so, and as I said before, like these 3 carriers, they can't collude on trying to ratchet down the price on AST, which by the way, I think it's important to note in the press release, it talks about all existing carrier agreements will hold in place with the satellite operators, right? AST has, I believe, this is me estimating, I think it's a 3-year exclusivity once a service is launched and it's mutually exclusive. For Verizon, I think it's probably somewhere between 2 to 3 years. And so once AST's special service launches in, let's say, 2027, that's going to be in place until 2030, 2029, right? T-Mobile, on the other hand, that exclusivity ends in a few weeks. So this JV and the timing of the announcement, I mean, it's clear as day, like what it's for and what it's targeting. And that's T-Mobile joining AST. And, you know, some of the— going back to Tim Farrar, he said, let's see, I mean, this is just crazy. Unsurprising that AST is trying to claim it for themselves, but it's clear that AT&T Verizon, which by the way, like this guy is making assertions based off of stuff he's reading through his like fucked up lens. But he has not spoken to the companies. He's— the carriers hate him. They don't speak to him. But he is like, it's clear that AT&T and Verizon want more alternatives. In addition, other D2D providers are now going to have to follow Starlink's aggressive pricing. What does he mean by that? Starlink's aggressive pricing on texting? We're talking about broadband. And by the way, like this, Tim is asserting that AST was not a part of this and it's all about Starlink. Then explain where— I'm still waiting. I know you're waiting, but I haven't seen a press release from Starlink. Where's that press release? That was like, this was 6 hours ago. I haven't seen the press release from Starlink or Globalstar. Like, my guess is those executives are finding out about this JV today. It's important to understand that Starlink is— the core business is competitive with the MNOs. You have the CEO saying, I want to become an MNO myself and I want to compete. I also want to build my own phone, so I'm going to compete with Apple and Samsung and Android. This JV, it's clear as day. It's like you could be, if you're a short seller, by the way, like there were guys who were trying to short the stock and these FUDsters, they were trying to push it below and it got to like 75 or 74 and change, which I don't, talk normally about how aggressively I trade, but I was loading the boat today because like the market just didn't get it in the beginning. And a lot of people are like, oh, this press release doesn't say AST, so maybe it's bad. No, they need to get this thing through regulators. They need to like tell regulators it's an open JV. They're going to work with everybody. But in the end, there was one company that went out with a press release the same time that these guys did. And those executives, by the way, you talk to executives at AST, they knew this was coming. They've known that this has been in the works and they've been working on it. If you were to go to ask Glynne Shotwell at Starlink, which I don't know what she would say, but they're probably surprised because I don't see their press release. And in the end, like Starlink is a competitor and this also applies to this also applies to Amazon/Globalstar/Apple. Like the MNOs have a friendly relationship, but it's, you know, they need each other with Apple, but they're always wary of Apple trying to garner, you know, get more hold of the customer and the value that they're selling to them. And so I can tell you like with 100% certainty that the MNOs, they don't trust Apple fully and they certainly don't trust Amazon fully. And so this is them circling their wagons and pulling together what is their most valuable resource, which is spectrum, low-band spectrum, and also customers, right? They own the customer. And so, and the person, the company that's positioned to deliver the broadband service that is working in cooperation and not against them, which is what Starlink and Amazon will be doing, is AST. And so I'm just kind of going through this. Yeah, I mean, today, it's what I was telling people this morning is that this is Verizon 2.0, like when AT&T signed their definitive commercial agreement in May of 2024. And then at the end of the month, Verizon came on as a strategic partner where they contributed spectrum, made their investment, entered into partnership, which, you know, eventually led to the commercial agreement as well. This is that time. And yes, the market is going to take time for people to digest it. I saw a note from Bank of America where they're like, well, this is interesting. It could open T-Mobile up for AST, but we're more focused on launch, which I get it. That's totally fair. And by the way, that's going to come in the comment or the questions that Deutsche Bank today, the analysts, or sorry, investors were asking, Brian Kraft, a lot of the questions were focused on production and cadence, but like, and that's why like the stock price isn't up more today because people are focused on that. But once they have time to digest this more, I'm like, to me, the stock should be well north of $100, right? Because like you've locked up 100% of the market. And any fool who's trying to say that this is somehow an agreement to better negotiate with Elon Musk and put Starlink into, you know, give their customers to Starlink, they're out of their mind. They're completely, they've lost it. They, the mental contortion, like gymnastics to try to come to that conclusion, like they're insane. And these are people who are, you know, they're wrong and they can't admit it, right? Like Tim Farr here, there's like a whole thread where he's trying to justify how somehow this is good for Starlink. and it's bad for AST. And it's like, dude, read the room. Like, it doesn't get any clearer that AST's press release went out the same time as these guys, and there's no Starlink press release, there's no Globalstar press release, there's no Equatus press release. These guys are all— these people other than AST are learning about it today. You and I, they woke up, you know, me in Vegas at 5 AM, just like every— you know, they woke up and read the same release that, that, um, that everyone else is. Whereas AST, they've been working with the companies on this and they issued their press release at the same time. So, but yeah, the FUDsters will say, well, they're not named in it. Well, that's— this joint venture has to get through regulatory approvals, right? And they cannot— they're not going to cut off service to anybody. They're going to say they're working with everybody. But clearly, and Will Townsend pointed this out, and because he was briefed, he was brought over the wall and briefed this briefed on this transaction before, he said this is clearly a defensive move against satellite operators, NTNs, that are planning to go directly to consumer and compete. And so what does he mean by that? So Starlink today operates a completely separate network. It's a roaming network, and the way that it works for T-Mobile is you get an eSIM. And so when you're off T-Mobile coverage, then it switches to Starlink. And it's just like if you were to go to Europe and you you're on Vodafone network, it takes over. That's very different than what AST is doing. AST is integrating completely in AT&T and Verizon and eventually in the near term, T-Mobile's network. And you are going to have a seamless handoff between towers and satellite. And there's a lot of great things in terms of efficiency, lower power usage. Putting aside the satellite architecture, there's a whole host of reasons why you would do that. And you can also tailor custom packages to customers what you want to sell. AT&T's package is going to look different than T-Mobile's and it's going to look different than Verizon's. But from a competitive standpoint, so there was a part of me that was fearful this morning. I was like, well, what does this mean? Like, I guess, could there be some antitrust issues or FCC issues? So this is the way that's going to be pitched to the regulators. The joint venture is going to go to Chairman Carr and say, hey, look, we're going to have this joint venture. We want ultimately the consumer to have the best experience possible. We're going to pull together our spectrum and we're going to make this economic where independently we're going to negotiate economics. Because by the way, we have independent economic agreements with AST, AT&T, 3 years exclusivity, Verizon, 2 to 3 years exclusivity, T-Mobile on the come. They'll figure out something. They're going to go to the regulators and say, well, this agreement, or sorry, this JV, ultimately what we're trying to do is provide a full seamless broadband, true broadband experience for consumers. Like, it's a win, it's a win, right? And then by the way, Starlink's going to come and say, they're going to complain and say, hey, we're not part of this. You know, we're, this is anti-competitive. And then what AT&T and Verizon and T-Mobile will say is, well, you know, Starlink, you have been selling your service directly to AT&T and Verizon customers, which we all know, like you can get T-Satellite if you If you get an eSIM. And so you have the ability to, on a standalone basis, which is what you already do with direct fixed wireless service to your home, you're going to go compete directly for our customers. And Elon said it in the public as part of the FCC approval that you've become a facilities-based hybrid carrier. Like you're using Boost Mobile, which by the way happens to rely on AT&T to a degree. But that's going to be a hard thing for Musk to, like if you're a $2 trillion company, how can you say that Musk can't compete against the wireless carriers? And you've got what, 60 megahertz spectrum? Granted, there's no cellular spectrum, but you're going to be— it's not going to be the best service, but it's going to be a good service, or it's going to be as good as you develop it. Maybe you have to build bigger satellites or whatever, but that's called competition, right? So from the SEC's perspective, they'll say, Carr's going to have a tough time not approving this, right? Because he's given SpaceX and Starlink every advantage to develop their own system. So it'd be tough for him to argue otherwise. And from the DOJ's perspective, they'll say, oh, this is good. There's a 4th credible competitor coming to market. Like you've got AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, and now you've got Starlink Mobile, which by the way, like they're not hiding, they're not saying that they've created this brand Starlink Mobile. They're buying, they're going to the next AWS-3 auction. They're going to buy more spectrum. They've got 60 megahertz of spectrum. Like that's a lot of value, right? And And the FCC has advantaged them by saying, hey, you don't have to build out towers. You can just deploy satellites to meet your buildout requirements. They made it so easy for them to enter the market. So the DOJ's going to be like, ah, okay, so you've got like Starlink, they're going to become a credible competitor. The wireless guys are picking AST for satellite coverage. And then, you know, Amazon's coming to market with like something eventually in 5, 6 years. This looks fine to me and they'll approve it, right? Or they might say like, well, You have to at least allow customers to, and this is the interesting part, they might say, well, maybe AT&T and Verizon and T-Mobile as part of, it's like the Windows operating system argument. It's like, well, you can't just pre-install Internet Explorer. This is the extreme, by the way. They might say, well, let people choose which service they want. And this is where the companies, like I said, if it ever got to that point, like bring it on. Like we have the best satellite technology. We can deliver broadband. We can deliver 100 megabits per second on previous generation. On the current generation that's coming out, 200 megabits per second. Eventually with MIMO and mid-band spectrum and C-band spectrum, that probably gets over a gig. Like, okay, yeah, I'll go toe-to-toe with like SOS messaging and texting. Brilliant. And so I truly think like this joint venture, it's going to happen. It's going to get approved. AST is in the pole position. There's a reason why T-Mobile softened their language recently and even talked about AST, and they throw Amazon in there, by the way. So this is part of the regulatory review or the record. When you talk about getting a transaction through FCC and DOJ review, they're going to look at quotes from everybody. And for the fact that AT&T's like, yeah, we want competition satellites and we think it's great, that's going to help approve this transaction, right? But at the end of the day, like if you don't provide something that's competitive, then it's not as if the companies are going to subsidize some shitty service, right? Like they're not going to use Starlink because it's a crappy service. And then they're incentivized also, by the way, like competitively not to use it because Starlink is like, I'm here to eat your lunch. I'm going to eat off your plate. Like, you know, I'm already competitive with you for— Your fixed, your fiber, your broadband at home. business, like, and I want to take your mobile customers, like, who's going to work with them? And so I just think it's funny because like Tim Farrar, I mean, God bless his soul, he's been wrong this entire way. And he's just today, it was like the most desperate copium I've ever seen where he is drawing his own conclusions, which by the way, like I spoke with AST management this morning and I was like, I just want to make sure like I understand the implications of this. And my conclusions were correct. And Tim Ferriss, who's kind of grabbing things out of the air to make whatever shitty arguments he had in previous weeks, months, years somehow fit this like illogical puzzle. He's still doing it. It's like, just admit you're wrong. Like there's no, it's crazy. Like I'm just reading this thread, which by the way, like I don't see his stuff because I haven't blocked. But somebody pointed it out and then I read and I was beside myself. But here's a fun one. But there's absolutely no credibility to claims by the clueless cult that this is about T-Mobile defecting, let alone wanting superior technology. T-Mobile has simply concluded— and by the way, like, he has not spoken to T-Mobile, he hasn't spoken to Starlink, he doesn't speak to anybody, but this is— he's like, he's speaking with authority. T-Mobile has simply concluded that D2D exclusivity isn't worth what Starlink is demanding because customer interest and usage is too low. No, I was told definitively that T-Mobile is defecting. End of story. That's like, period. I have primary sources. I talked to them. And so this clown, just like he normally does, I guess there's like a few voices in his head and they kind of debate each other and he is like, okay, this has to be the logical conclusion. But, but yeah, let me see here. But yeah, it's funny because this guy Tim Farrar, I mean, again, like he retweeted the AST's press release and he said, unsurprising that AST is trying to claim it for themselves. Yeah, they are because the press releases went out simultaneously from AT&T who is AST's primary partner, they were the ones who press released it, not T-Mobile, not Verizon. They press released it and AST press released it too. And you speak to AST Space Mobile Management, which Tim, you're more than welcome to pick up the phone and call them. They will tell you that they've been working on this and that it went out together. And again, I'll throw it back to him. Where's the Starlink press release? Where is Globalstar press release? Where is Equitas or ViaSat? Where are their press releases? They're nowhere. So I'm just trying to read some more of this, this brain-dead stuff he's put out there. Like he, yeah, this is like now, now he's just making up stuff. The timing of this announcement was clearly dictated by AT&T wanting to wait for approval of the EchoStar spectrum deal. T-Mobile and SpaceX have been arguing for a while about price renewal of exclusivity, hence leaks about the size of the deal.
[00:34:40] Speaker A: What?
[00:34:40] Speaker C: What is he talking about? There's—he's just drawing all these conclusions about what AT&T thinks or what T-Mobile thinks. He has no clue. I guess the bigger question—and now now he's starting to ask questions, which is dangerous. Like instead of just making assertions as fact, he's like, "I guess the bigger question is whether MNOs have socialized this plan with the FCC already. Is it one of the factors behind recent statements about wanting there to be?" Multiple D2D networks. My guess is like it has been socialized with the FCC, but probably at a very high level, but nothing in detail. And this is going to be a pretty long process, right? Like once this agreement goes definitive, then they'll take it to the FCC and it will be probably a very long review. But in the meantime, that's not going to preclude T-Mobile from starting to do some groundwork with AC, right? And so do we see in June, July, some announcement that T-Mobile, as part of its broadening expanse to meet customer needs and give them choice, enters into a partnership with AST. They're gonna contribute their PCS G block, the mid-band spectrum that Starlink's using today, but they're also gonna give it on a non-exclusive basis to AST. That can be a part of the transition, or they're gonna free up some low-band spectrum in 800 or— T-Mobile has 600 megahertz spectrum, I think. as well, but open some of that up, at least in the non-covered areas and open that up for AST. Yeah, you could totally see that. You could absolutely see that press release go out in June or July, and I wouldn't be shocked. Right. The other thing is that, and I kind of hinted at this too, but, and this was covered in the call on Deutsche Bank. Like, I think Blue Origin's going to get to launch, and this is what I talked about, like how there's more big news coming. I think Blue Origin's going to get FAA approval very soon. You could see New Glenn 4 launch probably at the earliest, maybe early June, but probably mid to late June. And we're going to be cooking again with Blue Origin after the 2 to 3 SpaceX launches, which I think we have, as disclosed in this Deutsche Bank conference, there's a handful of SpaceX launches and equivalents, which I think is ULA. Centaur, and then a handful of Blue Origin launches. And I think it's important to note that this, the old quote of, you know, one launch on average of every 1 to 2 months, that was actually for the entire year, but that quote should be rescinded. I think the company is now planning to launch every month, and there could be even 2 launches a month into the end of this year. And the target is to get to 45 satellites by the end of the year. That could slip possibly by a month or 2, but but we're going to get there. And so that does, you know, ultimately if it slips by a month or two, if you have 100% of the US market, it really doesn't matter, guys. It absolutely does not matter. And so today the news, yeah, I think because it wasn't like couched and explicitly said that the carriers are going to use AST, which again, I'll talk about, I'll emphasize that It's for regulatory purposes. They need to get this JV approved. They need to show that they're going to open it up for competition to other satellite providers. But at the end of the day, we know who can deliver the goods and which company is aligned with carriers. That's not Starlink. Starlink is developing their own standalone business. That's not Amazon. Amazon ultimately wants to go direct to consumer. They want to control that. It's AST. And so you're not going to see anyone explicitly talk about this, but I understand the CEOs of some of the MNOs are going to be at JP Morgan next week, and perhaps they'll start talking about this JV and they'll probably get questions about it, and it's going to highlight things quite a bit. But it is good to note that Investor Business Daily article, people get it. They understand the competitive dynamics here and why Starlink is such a competitive threat. And why this JV was necessary in order to create a framework to bring T-Mobile on board. And for those people who've heard me probably more times than they want, I talked about this idea of how could T-Mobile actually join? It would be in a scenario where Starlink's potential competition was too hard to ignore for Verizon and AT&T. And I think we are seeing that play out now where T-Mobile going to Verizon and AT&T, hey, look, you know, sorry, we let these guys in the henhouse. They're going out to the AWS-3 auction and they've bought a ton of spectrum. They're pretty much, they want to, they want to, you know, they want to take us out. Please let us in. And, you know, you might, AT&T and Verizon might say, well, you know, tough shit. That's your problem. And then the way that T-Mobile would force its way in would say, would be, hey, if you guys don't let us in, we're going to enable Starlink to become a full-fledged wireless carrier by letting them wholesale their network. You basically become a virtual network operator so they can get low-band coverage. And then in that construct, then AT&T Verizon would say, okay, you know what? We take that back. You guys can join and we want to have control over these direct-to-device services. And what that means indirectly is we can't let Starlink eat our lunch, right? But beyond that, forget about that. We want to provide customers with true broadband service, and that is AST. And it's exactly why AT&T and Verizon got together and they contributed 850 MHz spectrum because they wanted to improve the experience and the service. And that's why T-Mobile will be brought in and they will contribute spectrum as well. And so ultimately, this the service, which I think the backbone is going to be low-band spectrum, it's not going to be MSS, it's going to be anchored by these 3. And so yeah, it's going to take the market time to figure this out. There's sell-side analysts, half of them are awful, a third of them, half of them are awful, a quarter of them are kind of okay. And maybe there's a quarter like Deutsche Bank, Brian Kraft, like he gets it. But I assume over the next few days as people kind of digest this information, institutions, people like you and me, short sellers, the stock's going to rerate, right? Like, and you're, you've got this on the back. So this news in and of itself, the stock should be well north of $100 today, in my opinion. If T-Mobile was actually put into the, or sorry, AST was actually put into the press release, the stock would be trading at like $130 right now. But they're making it a little harder for you to figure out because of that regulatory wrinkle where they can't do that. So in the meantime, we've got Blue Origin FAA imminently will get reapproved for launch. That first batch shipment, is it going to come out tomorrow? Is it going to come out over the weekend? Is it going to come out on Monday? We're literally within spitting distance of that press release going out. So the cadence of positive catalysts, like the news is about, the deluge is about to come. Right? So you got batch one coming. It's going to launch in mid-June. There's some like speculation that batch two is going to be shipped pretty soon, which which gets you to a July launch date, and there could be potential for not one but two launches in July. The other some other nuggets I would say that today Deutsche Bank, you know Scott talked about Ariane that that vehicle. being able to launch 4 to 5 Bluebirds. Um, Japan, Mitsubishi Heavy, it looks like they can launch about 3 Bluebirds in the heaviest configuration. And then India, ISRO, because these are not the FM-1, FM-2, but composite Bluebirds, I think LVM-3 can actually take 2 Bluebirds up. So it's actually a viable vehicle, um, to utilize. Obviously you got to get it to India, and we had fun watching drag this satellite through these like, um, Indian suburbs through the rain. But yeah, there's options out there. It's not just Blue Origin or SpaceX. There's other options. But anyway, I think I've done enough talking about it today, but I did want to get back on and I know this morning I was a bit all over the place, but I did want to provide some additional thoughts. At Deutsche Bank, overall, I think Scott's tone, I was unable to take notes, but was very positive and bullish. And as I mentioned before, I think a lot of people, a lot of professional investors are focused on production cadence and launch, which is totally understandable. But what's getting lost in all of this stuff is this JV news today. And, you know, as when it was announced, I was buying, when it got down to like 74, 75, I was buying even more aggressively because it's like the market just doesn't get this. Over the next few days, it will get it. It will understand it. The stock will be above 100. And then with these catalysts, it's I think we're going to get to all-time highs in the very near term. So with that, I'll end it. Thanks everyone for joining, and I'll catch up again soon. Take care, everyone.
[00:44:07] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the AST Space Rover 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 Space Mobile, make sure to subscribe. Thanks again, and I'll see you next time.
[00:44:30] Speaker B: We're doing something very, very big, and I think we need to know it. We can really affect billion lives. AST Space Mobile. the only company that has proven technology to deliver cellular broadband 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 MNOs.
[00:45:07] Speaker A: Listen.
[00:45:07] Speaker B: Mmm, waffles.