SpaceX, Elon Musk's aerospace company, has moved to secure at least 80,000 mobile base station sites across the United States. The push is seen as part of a plan to combine a terrestrial network with its Starlink satellite internet service and emerge as the fourth mobile carrier in the U.S. market. Tesla, which is pursuing a merger with SpaceX, has canceled plans to sell the Cybertruck in Australia and New Zealand.
Bloomberg reported on the 22nd, citing sources, that SpaceX is in talks with telecom infrastructure companies to secure at least 80,000 base station sites nationwide. The target is equivalent to half of the 158,500 base stations operated in the United States last year.
One of the companies in the talks is Crown Castle, a U.S. telecom infrastructure provider. Crown Castle operates about 40,000 mobile base station towers in the United States.
Mobile networks operate by transmitting and receiving wireless signals through antennas installed on base stations across the country. Carriers typically lease equipment and installation space from telecom infrastructure companies rather than owning base station facilities outright.
SpaceX has been laying the groundwork for a mobile business. After recently acquiring low-band spectrum, it also won U.S. regulatory approval to launch 15,000 satellites that provide service directly to ordinary mobile phones. Adding ground-based base stations would allow the company to offer service packages combined with satellite connectivity. Musk said at a recent SpaceX earnings presentation that the company would build a terrestrial network to enable broad connectivity in every region where the businesses of SpaceX and Starlink are permitted.
Such a buildout would require enormous spending. Investment bank TD Cowen estimates the project would cost more than $80 billion. Providing service stable enough to compete with established carriers is another challenge.
Tesla, meanwhile, has withdrawn plans to launch the Cybertruck electric pickup in Australia and New Zealand. The company is refunding deposits in full to local reservation holders and offering a year of free supervised Full Self-Driving (FSD) to customers who order a new Model 3 or Model Y. With Musk formalizing the merger of the two companies, the market is watching whether Tesla, whose market capitalization is smaller than SpaceX's, will scale back its operations.