Telecom Experts Say Elon Musk’s Wireless Plan Is Historically Stupid
from the and-a-pony dept
Earlier this month I noted that Elon Musk’s Starlink is giving very unsubtle indications that the company wants to jump into the wireless business. I also noted that there’s a very long list of reasons why this isn’t likely to go well for him, ranging from the extremely high cost of network build-outs, to the fact that entrenched giants like AT&T and Verizon are very good at crushing insurgents.
As a launch gets closer we’ve seen more details into how Starlink actually hopes to try and make a wireless phone service work. Experts have already noted that the low-Earth-orbit Starlink satellite network is generally too congested to scale in the way the SpaceX IPO claims it can. The IPO projects a jump from 10 million to 300+ million in just a few years; an impossible feat.
Some had speculated that Starlink would accomplish this by buying a company like T-Mobile. The company also is poised to buy around $17 billion in AWS-4 and H-block wireless spectrum licenses from Echostar after Brendan Carr specifically launched an “investigation” into Echostar making it possible.
But instead of buying T-Mobile, Musk seems convinced that he can launch a nationwide wireless phone service by simply plunking down thousands of meshed femtocells installed on customer rooftops alongside existing LEO satellite dishes. Such femtocells would eat up backhaul capacity shared with the already capacity-constrained satellite-delivered broadband.
Even normally staid analysts at industry trade mags have called the idea incredibly stupid:
“This ranks as one of the top three dumbest ideas in my four decades of being in this industry,” said Earl Lum, the founder of analyst company EJL Wireless Research. What’s currently unclear is SpaceX’s precise definition of a small cell, but a typical outdoor small cell would come with power output of 5 watts per channel, in Lum’s book, and be difficult to install at residential properties.
“You need a real antenna in three sectors. To deploy this, it means you have to have a pole on a roof that’s good enough to hang three radios and three antennas, which is going to be hard,” he said. “You would have to go through the standard permitting for any macro cell site, and at that point why do you want a small cell?”
Keep in mind that Musk’s companies (especially Starlink and Tesla solar) don’t really have, or believe in, functional customer service. So the idea that existing Starlink customers are going to make all this work without coherent support is another wrinkle. There’s very little indication this would work; and it’s near impossible to make it scale up in urban areas where they’d compete with AT&T and Verizon.
Musk and friends may belatedly realize the unworkable nature of the idea later, at which point they just gobble up T-Mobile, which has steadily become shittier and shittier in the wake of the Sprint merger (precisely as deal critics predicted). Though even that would be very expensive and include lengthy, cumbersome integration, with no guarantee of meaningful success.
Filed Under: elon musk, mvno, phone service, spectrum
Companies: spacex, starlink, xai
Comments on “Telecom Experts Say Elon Musk’s Wireless Plan Is Historically Stupid”
When the POTUS is your phone-a-friend, permits are not a problem.
I hold 3 FCC licenses, one of which is for licensed 16GHz p2p from a rooftop polemount dish. The application is simple enough, has no background checks, oaths, or anything an agentic LLM couldn’t file. From that perspective, getting each SL sub to have a cell site is not a permit nightmare. Then, Mr. Doge Chainsaw can call Commander Orange Julius Caesar and just submit one list of address coordinates and have that trickle down to FCC ULS.
As much as it seems this shouldn’t be necessary, Mr. Musk’s personal “net worth” is not relevant to his now public company’s finances. So saying “He has the money” doesn’t mean as much as “It [the company] has the money” to deploy these cells.
Femto-cells? That was a cute moniker in the 3G days, but with AMPs being long gone, 3G being far history, and 4G being the current state of the status quo in the United States I think we can skip femto, mini, and micro and just call them cell sites. If you want more precision “cell site with Internet backhaul” to distinguish from p2p licensed links backhaul works.
Is the plan stupid? Real cell sites have power backup. Even electric utility-pole mounted “5G” sites have a fat pedestal nearby with power backup. The typical residential setup doesn’t have one, and the cost of installing those, maintaining those, and battery replacement would far surpass the cost of the radio gear. Sure, I have all my stuff on battery backup (soon to be an 18KPV with 14kWh EG-4 ESS batts) but that’s at my expense, and I’m not altruistic enough to spend it and give it away to largeCorp be it VZW, TMO, ATTWS, or SL.
Is an MVNO option off the table for SL? I doubt it. They make decisions in boardrooms and don’t reveal them until it’s all a fait accompli. TMO has their MVNO system so well put together anyone can be a WS provider in minutes [exaggerated for effect].
Now back to Mr. Musk. That’s one crazy cracker. He did set up an organizational goal of reusability of space launch vehicles and that IS revolutionary. (The 2000s word is “disruptive” and it is.) Can we repeat that with SL and terrestrial WS?
E
It’s worth reading the link tagged as “incredibly stupid” because it makes a number of very good points showing why this is technically and economically…stupid.
It’s not an operational fit for urban areas, it’s not a fit for rural areas, it’s not a fit for suburban areas, it’s really not a fit for anywhere. And on top of everything else: power. All of these radios require reliable power, and given the increasing stress on power grids pretty much everywhere, that would necessary mean solar (with increased cost and footprint) and battery backup (with increased cost and footprint).
“Historically stupid” I’d say the same thing about Vanilla Ice’s 1991 movie “Cool as Ice” but knowing who’s in charge, Trump will probably “drop that zero” (whatever’s left of our telecoms regulations and consumer protections) and “get with the hero” (his own buddy’s no-bid contract for making life worse for Americans.)
The real expert
“Telecom Experts Say Elon Musk’s Wireless Plan Is Historically Stupid” Which makes it right up Dementia Don’s alley, like the Iran war and tariffs.
Watch for Musk to IPO this baby based only on forecasts and cheat a bundle of shiny-bright-object investors out of another couple of billion bucks.
Re:
Eleventy double trillion TAM! It’ll elevate our consciousness into the ether or some other dumb crap.
Re: 'Thanks for the hundred million investment, annnnnnd it's gone.'
Loathe as I am to see Elon get any richer anyone stupid enough to jump on one of his scams at this point deserves to be left wondering what happened to all that money they handed over.
Historically Stupid or historically monopolistic?
“it’s near impossible to make it scale up in urban areas where they’d compete with AT&T and Verizon.”
Except he’s not going to compete, he thinks he’s going to bribe cities to give carve out monopolies the way cable companies did in the 80’s and 90’s. IOW he’s going to force those ‘customers’ to buy his product the way he tried to force companies to advertise on his dead bird site.
We’re all just NPC living in his ‘Who Wants to be a Trillionaire” TV reality game.
No.
Just no. Musk? No.
Better grift while the griftin's good!
I think Musk probably realizes his time is running out to score one more huge, ongoing government subsidy, and this absurd plan is the best he could come up with on short notice. He knows it won’t be long before Trump’s deteriorating cognitive abilities get to the point where he won’t even recognize Musk when he calls:
“Elon? I don’t know any Elon! Leave me alone!”
He might have a role in the satellite phone market for people who want global coverage and plan to be in the middle of nowhere or at sea or something. Other satellite phone companies are successful. (or for people who have censorship/spying problems in their home countries)
Even if I don’t agree all the criticisms of Musk, I still don’t agree with doge.
The method to launch this involves lots and lots of corruption. The method to promote this involves lots and lots of lies. But can he get any of this done in two years, while he has captive regulators to assist him? His future does not look that rosy.
Historically?
I think you misspelled “hysterically.”
Re:
Grab ’em by the hyster
Maybe sol as pack with Tesla solar-powered wall-mount batteries ?
What if required power comes from customer’s owned battery-packs, sold as “reducing electricity costs”, but actually eating some power to keep radio-relay / distributed-mesh ? If consumption is below ~10% averagd, customers may be happy …
Missed the mark
By the end of the first paragraph, it’s obvious the writer has no industry experience or knowledge. Musk would likely open up with a MVNO and as the take rate increases, he would deploy his technology.
Re:
Lol. Karl has been covering the industry in detail for more than two decades and is one of the most knowledgeable reporters on the beat.
Re:
Yeah, he’d probably do the thing he isn’t claiming to do. That he doesn’t need spectrum and his own cell network for. Probably that.
What do you get when you spend your entire life surrounded by 'yes men'?
“This ranks as one of the top three dumbest ideas in my four decades of being in this industry,” said Earl Lum, the founder of analyst company EJL Wireless Research. What’s currently unclear is SpaceX’s precise definition of a small cell, but a typical outdoor small cell would come with power output of 5 watts per channel, in Lum’s book, and be difficult to install at residential properties.
I’m reminded of the ‘saying’ about how someone thought that Elon was brilliant because that’s what everyone had been saying and they weren’t knowledgeable enough in the field being discussed to say otherwise, only for the heiling loser to comment on a field they were knowledgeable about and exposing that in fact he’s a blithering idiot just bluffing as smart.