
This Billionaire Immigrant Is Racing Elon Musk To Connect Your Phone From Space
Last September, a crowd of seasoned spectators gathered at Cape Canaveral, Florida, to watch as SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket took flight for the 373rd time. But it wasn't carrying yet another of Elon Musk's Starlink satellites to join the 7,100-plus he has already circling Earth. Onboard instead were five satellites from AST SpaceMobile, a tiny Starlink rival that SpaceX has derided as a 'meme stock' in regulatory filings with the federal government. Each was equipped with a 700-square-foot antenna that would unfold in orbit, an early step in establishing a network AST hopes will someday best the incumbent mocking it.
The size of these antennas—and the even larger 2,400-square-foot version that will succeed them—are key to CEO and founder Abel Avellan's plan to win a new market: satellite internet beamed directly to your phone. In contrast to SpaceX, which uses thousands of satellites to connect residences, businesses, vehicles and even the White House to the internet, AST's super-large antennas should give it global coverage with just 90 satellites. The company plans to launch 60 into orbit by the end of 2026.
Jamel Toppin for Forbes
The goal is to keep cellphones connected when out of range of a tower. You'd be able to make calls even when hiking in a remote area or from a boat miles offshore. Until recently, that required expensive satellite phones with special hardware. 'Our vision is to provide connectivity without disadvantage to wherever people are located,' says Avellan, 54.
This isn't Starlink's main business: Its $12.3 billion in revenue largely comes from providing internet to fixed-base stations attached to homes and businesses, not mobile phones. Nor is it the vision of Jeff Bezos' Project Kuiper, a direct Starlink competitor, which launched the first 27 of a planned 3,200-plus satellites in late April. But Starlink isn't totally ignoring the phone business. It's currently in beta testing with T-Mobile to let users text on their phones via Starlink when they don't have any bars, giving it an early lead over AST. It also has thousands of satellites, to AST's five, and Musk's insider status with the Trump administration could prove important in the heavily regulated telecom business. Starlink's staggering $350 billion valuation dwarfs Midland, Texas–based AST's market cap (it went public in April 2021 via a special purpose acquisition company) of around $8.7 billion.
Still, AST has a shot at the emerging market for a satellite-based mobile cell plan, with a potentially substantial payoff. The big opportunity is not off-grid connectivity for Europeans and North Americans but providing internet to the more than 2.6 billion people, largely in the developing world, who struggle to get online at all. Most of them can't afford Starlink. A basic base station starts at $350; then it's around $80 per month for residential Wi-Fi. AST's pricing is still largely theoretical, but the startup hopes it can deliver for just a few extra dollars a month on a cellphone bill. That's a compelling proposition.
When it comes to broadband, 'the cheapest and most efficient way is through your phone,' Avellan says. Skipping out on building new cell towers entirely could mean major cost savings for the telecoms companies as well, if they can offer satellite internet in markets that don't yet justify that investment. Deutsche Bank (which is not an AST investor) estimates that the company's revenues could top $370 million in 2026 once its commercial service is up and running, and surpass $5 billion by 2030—with far less capital expenditure than Starlink will need to keep launching thousands of satellites.
The big obstacle for both companies is the basic physics of satellite communication: namely, that you need a direct line of sight from a satellite to your phone to get a signal. Starlink, Project Kuiper and multiple Chinese firms plan to tackle this by flooding the zone with thousands of small, cheap satellites in low Earth orbit, which hop signals between them to maintain steady connections with ground-based dishes. The antenna in your phone is a lot smaller, making it harder to get bandwidth to do more than text.
But AST's satellites are outfitted with antennas at least 50 times the size of Starlink's. It's a tricky feat of engineering—the centimeters-thick antennas require assembly in clean rooms to be securely packed into satellites at launch; then they're carefully unfolded again in orbit. It's much more complicated than a Starlink satellite, and each AST satellite costs about $21 million compared to around $1.2 million to build each Starlink bird. But the result is true broadband connectivity. AST's five satellites have successfully made video calls with phones on Verizon, Vodafone, Rakuten and AT&T networks. AST's have a longer lifespan, too, requiring replacement every 10 years compared to five to seven years for Starlink.
AST's big antennas make broadband-to-cellphone connections easier to pull off, says John Baras, a University of Maryland aerospace engineering professor, because they cover a much larger area and are designed to deliver a signal to devices in motion. Starlink has a bigger challenge making its system work for phones, he says, because it was envisioned as a way to deliver internet to fixed stations on the ground—not to mobile phones that by definition move around. 'Starlink is going to have problems,' he says. SpaceX did not respond to a comment request.
JR Wilson, VP of towers and roaming at AT&T, a major AST investor, compares the tech race between Starlink and AST to the home-video race of the 1980s. 'Beta came out first, but it didn't have some of the same qualities as VHS,' he explained, recalling Sony's ill-starred format which, despite delivering a better picture, failed because of its high price and short recording times. AT&T plans to start offering satellite connectivity using AST's service once it has more satellites in orbit next year.
AST currently has deals with dozens of other telecom providers around the world, including Vodafone, Rakuten and Verizon (all investors), offering potential access to around 3 billion subscribers. Partnering with big telecoms offers loads of advantages, says Mike Crawford, an analyst at Los Angeles–based B. Riley Securities. By avoiding the home satellite internet market that Starlink dominates, AST doesn't have to spend money to attract subscribers or build costly ground infrastructure—its partners have already done that. Plus, it avoids going head-to-head with giant legacy telecoms.
Avellan knows the ins and outs of the industry. Born in Venezuela, he studied engineering before starting his career at the Swedish telecom giant Ericsson. He founded his first company, Emerging Markets Communications, 'with $50,000 and a pregnant wife' in 2000, he says, to provide satellite communication services to Africa and the Middle East, as well as cruise and cargo ships. He sold it to satellite company Global Eagle in 2016 for $550 million and used some of the proceeds to found AST the following year.
After launching its first demonstration satellite in 2019, AST raised $110 million from Vodafone, Rakuten, AT&T and VC shops like London-based Shift Ventures. In 2021, it went public through a SPAC backed by private equity firm New Providence, raising an additional $462 million. The company's stock has more than doubled since then, making Avellan, who owns about 25% of it, worth some $2.1 billion. In March, AST and Vodafone announced plans for a joint venture spin-out company to offer AST's satellite connectivity to mobile operators in Europe and Africa.
PATRICK WELSH FOR FORBES
By John Buckingham
For a more grounded play on soaring demand for connectivity, wireless communications and broadcast tower REIT American Tower should continue to benefit from mobile data proliferation and 5G deployments, while an expanding data center segment positions it to profit from the rise of hybrid IT and AI workloads. Meanwhile, shareholders are rewarded with a 3.3% dividend yield to go along with handsome capital appreciation potential from a conservative 'picks-and-shovels' terrestrial player in the tech gold rush. Moody's just awarded the company's strong balance sheet, citing AMT's leading position in the global wireless infrastructure market, predictable revenue and income, consistently solid fixed charge coverage and excellent liquidity (it's also an investor in AST).
John Buckingham is a principal of AFAM Capital and editor of The Prudent Speculator.
These partnerships also unlock the parts of the radio spectrum that make communications between satellites and phones possible, which are primarily owned by legacy telecoms. Assuming regulators greenlight these deals—including a crucial lease from Ligado Networks for a frequency that would give AST's data the equivalent of 4G speeds—its satellites will be able to offer coverage globally. SpaceX can offer only text right now, although obviously that could change. With far fewer partnerships, Starlink is 'cash-rich but spectrum-poor,' according to Crawford, the B. Riley analyst.
That's not surprising, given Musk's ruthless approach to business. 'SpaceX famously partners with people to the point that they can extract what they want from you, and then they stomp on your face, right?' industry analyst Chris Quilty says. Still, Musk's deep connections to the Trump administration could present an existential challenge to AST's burgeoning business.
It's clear Musk's company views AST as a threat. SpaceX has already taken it to the mat over an array of regulatory issues governed by the FCC: spectrum access, space junk, blocking astronomical observations.
Those FCC filings are also where SpaceX dismissed AST as a 'meme stock.' It has a point: While shares in AST have gained a total of 172% since it went public, the stock has been on a tear since last May, jumping more than 1,000% at its peak. The company still has virtually no revenue to support its multibillion-dollar market cap; in 2024, AST spent $300 million but brought in only about $4 million in revenue due entirely to a contract with the Space Defense Agency to build military satellite communications infrastructure.
And like all meme stocks, it has a flock of ardent believers online. AST's investment community on Reddit has more than 30,000 active subscribers. When the company invited its retail investors to attend the September launch of its satellites, nearly 1,000 showed up.
'People are enthusiastic about the prospect that no matter where you live or work, you can have broadband,' Avellan says of the attention. 'If at the same time they can make money by investing and following what we do? Even better.'
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
16 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Three ways the Trump-Musk feud revealed the GOP's twisted hypocrisy
Aside from being globally cathartic, the all-too-predictable breakup of President Donald Trump's unquenchable ego and Elon Musk's immense sense of self-importance pulled the dressing-room curtain back on the Republican Party. And what we saw was both cringeworthy and indecent. Or as I like to call it, the Republican Party. Here are three things this episode of 'Real Annoying Billionaires of Washington, DC' taught us about the conservatives who excitedly welcomed Musk – and his money – into politics: As the president and the weirdo billionaire hurled insults at each other on June 5, Trump posted this threat: 'The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon's Governmental Subsidies and Contracts.' Gee, I wonder who, up until June 5, was helping Musk grease the wheels to line up 'Billions and Billions of Dollars' in additional government contracts? As The New York Times reported in March: 'Within the Trump administration's Defense Department, Elon Musk's SpaceX rocketry is being trumpeted as the nifty new way the Pentagon could move military cargo rapidly around the globe. In the Commerce Department, SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service will now be fully eligible for the federal government's $42 billion rural broadband push, after being largely shut out during the Biden era. … And at the Federal Aviation Administration and the White House itself, Starlink satellite dishes have recently been installed, to expand federal government internet access.' Opinion: Musk erupts, claims Trump is in the Epstein files. Who could've seen this coming? How quickly Trump went from filling Musk's coffers to repay him for his support and campaign contributions to suggesting Musk's contracts were, in fact, a form of government waste and fraud. (I mean … they are a form of government waste and fraud, but not in the way Trump was suggesting.) There's no other takeaway from this other than: We were happy to pay Musk whatever he wanted as long as he loved Trump, but the minute he stopped loving Trump, we can easily stop paying him. I think there's a word for that. Musk's swift about-face on Trump shows what many of us have long suspected: Republicans or Republicans-of-convenience like Musk don't actually like or respect Trump. On Feb. 7, Musk posted on social media: 'I love @realDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man.' On June 5, Musk posted: '@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!' Going from 'I love you, man' to 'I'm alleging you're connected to a notorious sex offender who was facing child sex trafficking charges before he died of suicide in jail' is quite a journey. And it implies that Musk saw Trump for what he is: a useful, loathsome fool. Opinion: Who would want to have babies under a Trump administration? Not me. The minute Trump became not useful to Musk, he sang his truth, something I'd bet most Republicans would do if they had untold wealth and didn't have to worry much about repercussions. That tells you all you need to know about the modern-day GOP – liars boosting a lout in their own self-interest. For all its fanfare, the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency that Musk oversaw accomplished precious little cost-cutting while inflicting massive harm on America's global reputation, the lives of people reliant on U.S. aid, and the overall functioning of the federal government. Republicans knew this yet still tripped over themselves to toss roses at Musk's feet, hailing him as some kind of genius/savior. They wanted his money, and they wanted the disinformation cannon that comes with his right-wing social media platform. But when Musk grew wise to what Republican lawmakers were doing with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act – a deficit-ballooning monstrosity – he turned on his handmaidens and his former love, President Trump. Opinion alerts: Get columns from your favorite columnists + expert analysis on top issues, delivered straight to your device through the USA TODAY app. Don't have the app? Download it for free from your app store. So Trump, of course, called him crazy. Which begs the question: Why were you letting a crazy person access Americans' most private data and demolish the federal workforce? And are you now going to … you know … make sure the guy you think is crazy didn't do something catastrophically bad? Congressional Republicans had to pick a side, and they've largely stepped into Trump's arms, knowing Musk may well be disliked even more than the sitting president. The Washington Post reported June 6: 'Across the government, the Trump administration is scrambling to rehire many federal employees dismissed under DOGE's staff-slashing initiatives after wiping out entire offices, in some cases imperiling key services such as weather forecasting and the drug approval process.' Translation: Musk's DOGE nonsense was for naught, an attempt to fluff a billionaire's ego while cloaking the high-spending, deficit-raising moves Republicans were going to make all along. There's a sucker born every minute, and two Republicans to take 'em. Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @ and on Facebook at You can read diverse opinions from our USA TODAY columnists and other writers on the Opinion front page, on X, formerly Twitter, @usatodayopinion and in our Opinion newsletter. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump vs. Musk shows us depths of the GOP's moral rot | Opinion
Yahoo
43 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Elon Musk Has Benefited From DOGE Cuts but Have the Rest of Americans? Experts Weigh In
Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has claimed massive savings while facing criticism for potentially benefiting the billionaire personally. Congressional reports estimate Musk's companies avoided $2.37 billion in potential liability through DOGE's regulatory changes this year. For You: Read Next: Meanwhile, everyday Americans face increased delays and diminished access to essential services, according to finance expert Andrew Lokenauth, founder of A Senate subcommittee investigation revealed how DOGE cuts have disproportionately benefited Musk and his business empire. According to the minority staff report, Musk's companies faced 25 federal investigations before Trump took office. The report estimated Tesla alone faced $1.19 billion in potential liability for allegedly misleading autopilot statements. Check Out: The Congressional analysis further revealed that Musk put pressure on the head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to resign before Trump's inauguration. This could be because in September 2024 the FAA suggested several fines totaling $633,009 against SpaceX for license infractions. The FAA also tried to dismiss regulators overseeing Musk's economic interests. However, Musk can't be held accountable for this action because his status as senior advisor shields him from scrutiny that cabinet members receive. DOGE's website claims $175 billion in total savings since Trump took office, representing over $1,000 per taxpayer. However, analysis by multiple news outlets reveals significant accounting errors and questionable methodology in these calculations. According to The New York Times, earlier DOGE claims included an $8 billion typo for an $8 million contract. The Atlantic reported that verified budget savings stood at just $2 billion after correcting various accounting mistakes. Per a BBC analysis, less than 40% of DOGE's claimed savings include links to supporting documentation. According to CBS News, DOGE's actions may have actually cost taxpayers $135 billion through productivity losses and rehiring. 'There have been sectors where waste was reduced, mainly in outdated bureaucratic processes. Streamlining digital operations or cutting legacy contracts helped modernize tech and defense procurement. A few urban centers even saw faster permit approvals,' said Daniel Ray, national insurance expert and CEO of 'Rural communities and working-class families often get hit hardest. When funding is cut without a backup plan, essential services like mail or healthcare access vanish overnight,' Ray added. Reports from USA Today and the Center for American Progress also confirmed that Americans in some regions are experiencing longer wait times for Social Security and other federal services after staff reductions. Public trust in federal agencies has continued to decline as DOGE's cost-cutting measures reshape government operations. According to a KFF Health Tracking Poll, 61% of Americans opposed major cuts to staff and spending at federal health agencies. Moreover, 54% said the Trump administration and DOGE have gone too far with recent reductions. The same survey found that most Democrats and independents see the cuts as reckless, while a majority of Republicans support the changes as necessary for efficiency. 'Some see the cuts as needed tough love, while others see neglect. The mixed signals make it harder for people to believe the system works for them, especially when services feel slower or out of reach,' Ray explained. An analysis from the Council on Criminal Justice also warned that funding cuts risk eroding public trust in government, especially when services are reduced or discontinued. Lokenauth said indiscriminate reductions can lead to disruptions, backlogs and a decline in service quality, which further undermines confidence in federal institutions 'Policymakers need to understand fiscal responsibility should never mean sacrificing service. The lesson from DOGE is clear: Cutting costs isn't leadership unless paired with clear improvements and a strategy that protects the vulnerable while fixing what's broken,' Ray said. While DOGE's $175 billion in claimed savings includes contract cancellations and fraud crackdowns, experts argue that the human cost risks overshadowing short-term gains. The true long-term impact of DOGE's cuts on American communities and finances remains under debate, with both positive and negative effects still emerging. The subcommittee report said it does not accuse Musk of illegal activity in his DOGE role. However, according to multiple experts, the concentration of regulatory relief benefiting Musk's companies raises ethical questions. Per ongoing analysis, the true long-term impact of DOGE's cuts on American communities remains under scrutiny. Editor's note on political coverage: GOBankingRates is nonpartisan and strives to cover all aspects of the economy objectively and present balanced reports on politically focused finance stories. You can find more coverage of this topic on More From GOBankingRates 5 Cities You Need To Consider If You're Retiring in 2025 This article originally appeared on Elon Musk Has Benefited From DOGE Cuts but Have the Rest of Americans? Experts Weigh In Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data


New York Times
an hour ago
- New York Times
Charging Electric Cars, a Bane of Their Owners, May Be Improving
Since Tesla installed its first Superchargers in 2012 for the exclusive use of its customers, owners of other electric cars have often felt like second-class citizens. They have wandered in search of electric oases in desolate parking lots, often making desperate calls to help centers after becoming stymied by balky or broken chargers. It's no surprise, then, that consumers rank problems with public electric vehicle charging and the time it takes to fuel up as their top two reasons for rejecting electric vehicles, according to J.D. Power. But help may finally be at hand. Automakers and charging companies are building new stations and updating their cars to allow drivers to more easily and quickly recharge their vehicles. They are also outfitting charging stations with more amenities like food and bathrooms while making the devices more reliable. And because chargers are only as fast as the cars they connect with, automakers are designing new cars to absorb electricity at Usain Bolt-level speeds. In addition, many automakers have cut deals with Tesla allowing owners of other cars access to the company's fast-charging network, the largest in the country and widely considered the most reliable. There is early evidence that efforts to improve electric vehicle charging are paying off. In recent years, J.D. Power surveys showed that about 20 percent of attempts to charge electric vehicles at all public stations ended in failure because of faulty chargers, long lines or payment glitches. But in the first three months of 2025, overall failure rates fell to 16 percent, the biggest improvement since the surveys began in 2021. 'The industry is finally elevating as a whole,' said Brent Gruber, an executive director at J.D. Power. The number of chargers has also increased. There were about 55,200 fast chargers in the United States in May, up from 42,200 a year earlier, according to federal data. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.