(Credit: AST SpaceMobile/SpaceX)
AST SpaceMobile is criticizing SpaceX for allegedly using "anticompetitive" tactics to try and override concerns about its cellular Starlink system for phones.
"Ironically, SpaceX's own attempt to intimidate and bully its competitors, regulators, and cellular operators is itself anti-competitive and an effort to deflect technical shortcomings of its own system,” AST SpaceMobile tells the Federal Communications Commission.
The startup is hitting back after SpaceX sent a letter to the FCC earlier this month, accusing AST SpaceMobile of spreading misinformation meant to “hamstring” its work on the direct-to-cell Starlink system. SpaceX also derided AST SpaceMobile as “meme stock” driven by investors and foreign partners.
In response, AST SpaceMobile sent its own letter to the FCC on Thursday, calling out SpaceX for allegedly trying to “manufacture a controversy.”
“SpaceX has resorted to hurling unfounded accusations at AST SpaceMobile, a company capable of delivering space-based cellular broadband [device-to-device] connectivity to every American,” the company told the FCC. “AST SpaceMobile respectfully requests that SpaceX refrain from making further inflammatory statements to distract from key MNO [mobile network operator] concerns.”
The dispute highlights the simmering competition in the race to deliver satellite connectivity to today’s smartphones. Like SpaceX, AST SpaceMobile is working to launch a high-speed satellite service to help carriers fill dead zones in their cellular coverage. But SpaceX is much closer to launching its own competing service through T-Mobile; it already has 240 satellites in orbit. In contrast, AST only has five satellites in space and may need another year or more before its satellite fleet is large enough to offer continuous coverage over the US.
The problem is that SpaceX has been urging the FCC to grant a waiver to loosen the radio emission limits for the cellular Starlink satellites. Without the waiver, the satellites risk losing the ability to power real-time satellite voice calls for consumer phones.
(Credit: Starlink.com)However, a growing number of companies—including AT&T and Verizon, key investors of AST SpaceMobile—have been imploring the FCC to reject SpaceX’s request to loosen the radio emission limits, citing their own data showing it’ll generate radio interference for their mobile networks. The regulatory battle has since escalated; a group of European telecommunication firms and partners of AST have also told the FCC they’ll sue if SpaceX receives the necessary waiver to operate the cellular Starlink technology beyond the normal limits.
AST is now taking a more vocal role in the dispute. In Thursday’s letter to the FCC, the company said it supported the mobile carriers' "legitimate" interference concerns about cellular Starlink technology operating beyond the normal radio emission limits.
"AST SpaceMobile’s position is simple: SCS [supplemental coverage from space] providers should be allowed to operate as long as they avoid causing harmful interference to the cellular networks on which billions of people rely globally,” the company said.
In the same letter, AST also alleged that SpaceX’s lobbying efforts to the FCC are a “thinly veiled attempt to deflect the technical shortcomings of its own design and its inability to effectively share terrestrial spectrum.”
However, SpaceX has long maintained its request to increase the radio emission limits for the cellular Starlink technology won’t generate radio interference, citing its own analysis. In a separate letter to the FCC last week, SpaceX also continued to fire shots at AST SpaceMobile, saying, “Unfortunately, AST is once again marshaling its investors to make bogus technical arguments from harming AST’s competitors.”
“The latest tag-team letters from AST’s investors AT&T and Verizon only further demonstrate that AST’s primary goal is to suppress competition, no matter the cost to American families and first responders,” the company added.
In the meantime, AST and SpaceX are still waiting for the FCC to grant full regulatory approval, enabling the companies to operate their cellular satellite services commercially.