I Believe that Satellites Will Replace Cell Towers; Here's Who I Think Will Win (and it's not SpaceX)

Recently SpaceX has been saying that wireless direct to cell represents a massive market and could surpass broadband. SpaceX is far from a value stock, and I firmly believe that global connectivity will no longer be focused on terestrial cell towers which are expensive and inefficient. The future, which is characterized by long-term structural growth, I personally believe will be in space-based direct-to-cell and broadband connectivity. With that said, I don't think SpaceX is the only winner, and I believe that AST SpaceMobile is positioned to be a major winner in the direct-to-sell market.

ASTS is quietly building the fundamental global connectivity infrastructure of the future, right in SpaceX's shadow. This is not a promo or ad, but I wrote a deep dive on my thesis surrounding ASTS, which has more information than I can fit in my Reddit post here. you can read it in full here: [https://open.substack.com/pub/mulberryfinancial/p/the-final-frontier-of-global-connectivity?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=android&r=4af6n2](https://open.substack.com/pub/mulberryfinancial/p/the-final-frontier-of-global-connectivity?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=4af6n2)

My thesis hinges around telecoms needing a far more efficient technology to connect to devices. Terrestrial cell towers are incredibly expensive and inefficient.

For example, Canada's TELUS spent more than $276 billion to build out a cell tower network that doesn't even cover half of Canada's geography. When you need to rent the land that towers sit on, pay for electricity, and pay for regulat maintenance if a tower is damaged by a storm or the natural elements, the cost of running these massive terrestrial cell tower networks is massive.

With satellites in space, a lot of these problems go away. You don't need to pay to rent land and you don't need to pay for electricity. The only cost of running these satellites is the cost to make and launch them, and then to launch more once the useful life of a satellite is over. Currently ASTS's costs to manufacture each satellite is $23 million, and a constellation of satellites that ASTS says can cover the entire globe would cost $4.6 billion. Additionally, with ASTS's satellites, which operate in a higher orbit than their competitors, there is less drag on the systems, which should allow them to operate for longer.

Ultimately ASTS needs to scale its constellation to be able to serve more customers but I believe that the proof will be in the pudding. Telecoms will realize that it's much more efficient to connect to users from space. This is the future, in my opinion, and although we're not there yet, I think that this industry is one that is characterized by structural long-term growth.

When it comes to valuation, ASTS has a market cap of $34 billion, while the global wireless telecom market is valued at over $1.1 trillion. The potential for growth is massive. Additionally, SpaceX, which just went public, is now valued at over $2.5 trillion, and funnily enough, SpaceX listed AST Spacemobile as a main competitor to Starlink Mobile. If you believe SpaceX's TAM numbers, they listed Starlink Mobile at a TAM of $740 billion and space-enabled solutions at a TAM of $370 billion. Both of these businesses AST Spacemobile operates in directly. If AST Spacemobile were to capture even 10% of that market, their revenue would be $110 billion. If those predictions are even half-close to being accurate, AST Spacemobile should be in for a very significant re-rating.