Qualcomm to supply 5G gear for SpaceX's Starlink Mobile network

SpaceX will build a terrestrial 5G network across tens of thousands of US sites using Qualcomm's radio and baseband equipment, Qualcomm said on 4 November. Deployment starts early next year.

The deal breaks the usual Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung line-up for national networks: a chip company is now supplying the radio access network.

What Qualcomm is supplying

Qualcomm will provide radio equipment, baseband units and software from its Dragonwing Cellular Infrastructure portfolio. The scope covers chips for distributed units, chips for radio units and the RAN software that runs on both, which Qualcomm calls QDU and QRU. The radios are Massive MIMO units with 64 transmit and 64 receive paths, or 64T64R, an architecture meant to improve coverage, capacity and spectral efficiency. Durga Malladi, Qualcomm's EVP and general manager of technology planning, edge solutions and data centers, told reporters the job is a macro network. "This is huge," he said. "It is 5G, but it is a nationwide network." He compared it to Viettel, the Vietnamese operator Qualcomm supplied, but that deployment covered only a few thousand sites.

SpaceX appears to be using none of Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, Huawei or ZTE, the vendors that dominate most national networks. Qualcomm has sold infrastructure to Verizon, Dish and Vodafone before. It made a bigger push into the 5G infrastructure market in 2020, though it is better known for the modems and radios inside phones than for base stations.

That matters to Qualcomm's balance sheet. The company booked nearly $10 billion in revenue in its most recent quarter, mostly from smartphone chips and patent licensing. Malladi called it Qualcomm's biggest network deal since the 3G era.

Why SpaceX needs base stations

Starlink accounted for 36% of SpaceX's revenue in the third quarter and 85% of operating profit. But the satellite network cannot deliver all the voice, video and data coverage that AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile offer on popular smartphones.

So SpaceX is buying spectrum and lining up partners. Last month it announced an agreement to buy a nationwide spectrum portfolio in the 800 MHz band. It has also held talks to gain access to 80,000 cell sites across the US, with tower company Crown Castle named as one of the infrastructure firms involved. Carriers normally lease space from tower companies such as American Tower and Crown Castle, which host several operators at one site. SpaceX has not announced tower partners or said how many towers it may need.

Spectrum is the constraint. SpaceX holds about 80MHz, against T-Mobile's 400MHz, T-Mobile chief technology officer John Saw noted on LinkedIn. Qualcomm argues that Massive MIMO, which packs dozens of antenna elements into each radio unit, will let SpaceX get more out of those frequencies.

The carrier fight is not settled by hardware

The Washington Post reported that SpaceX is in talks to acquire EchoStar's Boost Mobile, a deal that would bring 7.4 million customers, according to Handelsblatt. EchoStar would likely need approval from AT&T and T-Mobile for the transaction, Handelsblatt reported, because the two carriers have network-use agreements that would probably end automatically with a Boost sale.

What happens next

Tens of thousands of sites will follow over the multiyear agreement. Financial terms were not disclosed. SpaceX did not respond to a request for additional information.