Satellite Connectivity & Direct-to-Device

Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas reiterated a Buy rating and $300 price target on SpaceX, implying roughly 99% upside, as investors await Starship's first orbital test on September 22. The 14th Starship flight is expected to send the vehicle into orbit and deploy 26 Starlink V3 satellites, tying the launch directly to one of SpaceX's biggest growth businesses. CEO Elon Musk has said Starlink V3 deployment will begin in September and that the next-generation satellites could eventually deliver more than 100 times the bandwidth of the current constellation. Bernstein analyst Douglas Harned maintained an Outperform rating with a $248 target, implying about 64% upside, and said gaining Starship reusability to enable orbital data centers remains most important for SpaceX's valuation; he expects the Connectivity business to generate more than $100 billion in EBITDA by 2031. William Blair analyst Louis DiPalma called the latest deal SpaceXAI's fourth compute agreement in the past four months exceeding $11 billion in ARR, while Wall Street's average SpaceX price target stands at $232.07, implying about 54% upside.

United Airlines Holdings has signed a deal with DISH to bring live streaming content to onboard passengers using DISH's OnStream platform over United's Starlink connectivity. Starting this week, United customers can watch live professional and college football games on Starlink-enabled seatback screens on domestic flights, with broadcasts from ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, FS1, ESPN, ESPN2, NFL Network and TNF on Prime Video available on more than 200 Starlink-equipped airplanes. Starlink is free for MileagePlus members in every class of service, and United expects to complete installations before the end of 2027; the service is now active on more than 560 United mainline and United Express aircraft. United has already flown more than 31 million passengers on Starlink-powered aircraft across more than 464,000 flights, powering 14.2 million devices. The agreement follows United's earlier Starlink tie-ups, including an ESPN partnership that hosted a first-of-its-kind live Fantasy Football Draft from 30,000 feet and onboard streaming of the biggest soccer tournament in the world on domestic flights.

Viasat, Inc. announced that its ViaSat-3 F2 satellite has entered service across the Americas, completing the ViaSat-3 constellation and significantly expanding the company's network capacity, flexibility and resilience in the region. The satellite is designed to provide more than one terabit per second of throughput capacity over the Americas, with advanced beamforming technology that dynamically allocates capacity to high-demand flight routes, shipping lanes and geographic regions. With ViaSat-3 F1 already in service and F3 entering service across Asia-Pacific in August, completion of the ViaSat-3 constellation has tripled the bandwidth available across Viasat's global fleet, supporting its aviation, maritime, government and broadband customers. Chairman and CEO Mark Dankberg called the milestone a major step for Viasat and its customers, saying the VS3 satellites are the most advanced commercial satellites in the world in terms of adaptive beam forming, user performance and resilience to interference, and that the technology sets new commercial standards for solar power generation and thermal dissipation. Viasat, based in Carlsbad, California, completed its acquisition of Inmarsat in May 2023.

Baron Capital holds roughly $25 billion in SpaceX shares, and founder Ron Baron projects that Starlink alone can grow into a $1 trillion revenue line within a decade. SpaceX, trading under the ticker SPCX, closed at $150.88 on September 16, 2026, up 5.15% on the session but down 6.26% from its post-IPO reference, with a market capitalization near $1.16 trillion. SpaceX's Q2 connectivity revenue reached $4.29 billion, up 66% year over year, with enterprise and government revenue inside that line growing 108%, even as consumer ARPU slipped from $85 to $66. Baron's model rests on expanding the constellation to 100,000 satellites, with each generation deorbited every five years and replaced by hardware ten times more capable, a plan that depends on Starship V3 cutting the cost to orbit by 99% or more. SpaceX spent $18.37 billion on capex in Q2 alone, including $15.83 billion on AI compute, and placed a $25 billion inaugural investment-grade bond issuance to fund the buildout, according to Baron Capital. GAO researchers reviewing space-based data centers in April 2026 flagged that cooling at scale remains unproven because heat disperses poorly in the vacuum of space, and that on-orbit servicing is underdeveloped, undercutting Baron's claim that orbital compute costs just $2 one time. The near-term milestone to watch is the Starship V3 test-flight cadence, since a launch-economics breakthrough is the single variable that decides whether the 100,000-satellite plan is arithmetic or fiction.

Nigerian Communications Satellite Limited, known as NIGCOMSAT, has selected EchoStar's Hughes JUPITER scalable gateway system to support its NIGCOMSAT-2A and 2B satellites. Ground network preparation and deployment are scheduled to begin in 2026, ahead of planned satellite launches in 2028 and 2029. The long-term contract underscores EchoStar's expanding role in providing secure, high-capacity satellite connectivity across Africa and reinforces its position in next-generation, infrastructure-level communications projects. The win adds evidence of international demand for EchoStar's infrastructure, though the company's near-term picture remains focused on execution on new networks against a stressed balance sheet and large upcoming maturities. EchoStar's enlarged US$5,000 million buyback authorization stands out as its most relevant recent announcement, sitting alongside high leverage and negative free cash flow. EchoStar's narrative projects $13.2 billion in revenue and $775.8 million in earnings by 2029, assuming revenue declines of 3.4% per year and an earnings increase of about $6.5 billion from -$5.7 billion today, with a $128.43 fair value estimate implying 39% upside.

Cathie Wood says SpaceX had no need for public markets until Elon Musk's push into orbital AI data centers forced it to raise outside capital. The ARK Invest CEO told Livewire she never thought SpaceX would go public, but that Musk now needs the scaling the public equity markets provide. SpaceX's Connectivity business, primarily Starlink, generated $4.42 billion in operating income in 2025, while its AI business lost $6.36 billion, and the equation shifted further when SpaceX acquired Musk's xAI in February. SpaceX raised about $85.7 billion in its June IPO and told investors the proceeds would help fund AI compute infrastructure alongside launch systems and satellite capacity, with AI capital spending reaching $15.83 billion in the second quarter, about 86% of total quarterly capex, according to company filings. SpaceX argues orbital computing could sidestep constraints on terrestrial data centers such as electricity, land, cooling water and permitting by tapping solar energy in orbit, though Microsoft's Project Natick showed a technically successful underwater data center that was never scaled commercially, and Kalshi puts the chance of a 1-megawatt orbital data center going live before 2031 at 30%, with $46,000 traded on the market. Musk said he is highly confident SpaceX will launch AI computers from Nvidia into orbit in 2027, with significant scale expected in 2028.

SpaceX shares rose 5.1% to $151 in mid-morning trading Wednesday, pushing the stock back above the $150 level it first reached when it began trading June 12 following an IPO priced at $135. The catalyst was fresh policy news: U.S. defense officials confirmed on-orbit space-control weapons and highlighted progress on the Golden Dome interceptor program, tied to multibillion-dollar SpaceX contracts awarded earlier this year, pointing investors toward Starshield, SpaceX's national security satellite business, which already holds more than $6 billion in multi-year Space Force contracts for LEO-based communications and sensing. The Pentagon's FY 2027 budget request carries a $17.9 billion Golden Dome line item covering advanced space-based and terrestrial sensors, command and control, kinetic interceptors, and next-generation non-kinetic programs, and SpaceX is the only operator with a proliferated LEO constellation at production scale. The fundamental backdrop supports the move: the August 4 8-K showed Q2 revenue of $7.81 billion, beating the $6.82 billion consensus by 15%, with EPS of -$0.09 versus the -$0.29 estimate, Starlink subscribers doubling to 12.0 million, connectivity revenue up 66% year over year, and enterprise and government revenue climbing 108% on airline partnerships and Starshield contracts. Traditional missile-defense primes Lockheed Martin, RTX, and Northrop Grumman all sit inside the Golden Dome supply chain for interceptors, sensors, and integration, while pure-play space names like Rocket Lab and AST SpaceMobile tend to move with SpaceX headlines; SpaceX carries a $47.50 billion backlog and $93.52 billion in cash, alongside $18.37 billion in quarterly capex, $15.83 billion of which went into AI compute, with a market cap of roughly $1.16 trillion. Even after Wednesday's rally, SPCX trades 33% below its intraday high of $226 on June 16, and the tell into the close is whether it can hold above $151 and turn the IPO open price into support rather than a ceiling, with the next Starship V3 test flight, any Pentagon follow-on Starshield task orders, and updates on the pending $60 billion Cursor acquisition expected to close in Q3 as near-term catalysts.

SpaceX stock climbed 5% to $151.12 after Barron's reported the company plans to fly Starship again on September 22, in what would be the first attempt to place the vehicle's upper stage into stable Earth orbit. The move was SpaceX-specific rather than a sector rally: Rocket Lab sat at $63.75, up 0.3%, AST SpaceMobile was at $59.27, up 0.85%, and the Procure Space ETF was up 0.8% at $43.21, while the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust rose 0.3% to $759.99. Starship has flown twice since SpaceX began trading in June, and both attempts stayed suborbital; reaching stable Earth orbit is the threshold at which the vehicle can begin revenue flights instead of ferrying test articles. Separately, ARK Invest founder Cathie Wood projected Starship could generate $10 trillion in annual revenue by the end of the decade and called SpaceX's $1.75 trillion valuation a bargain, a forecast that assumes essentially every flight carries Starlink capacity at a flight rate far above anything Starship has achieved. SpaceX shares remain down 7% since they began trading in June, and the September 22 attempt is the next real information point for the stock.

SpaceX's AI computing business has flipped to positive adjusted EBITDA, a shift that could help lift the company from its roughly $2 trillion market capitalization toward $3 trillion. The AI segment, the smallest of SpaceX's three businesses in 2025 at about $3.2 billion in revenue, jumped to $3.4 billion in sales by the second quarter of 2026 after SpaceX began renting out spare capacity from its Colossus supercomputer instead of using it solely to train Grok. Starlink remains the only consistently profitable segment at scale, generating $7.5 billion in revenue, or roughly 60% of the company's total, along with $2.8 billion in operating income and $4.7 billion in adjusted EBITDA through June 30, with 12 million subscribers. The space business, which includes Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches, generated $1.6 billion in revenue from 78 launches in the first six months of the year but is still losing money at the operating line because Starship development is consuming billions in research and development costs. SpaceX has signed AI capacity deals including Anthropic at $1.25 billion a month for Colossus 1, Google Cloud at $920 million a month starting this fall, and Reflection AI at $150 million a month in a contract worth up to $6.3 billion, while CFO Bret Johnsen said the company is on track to reach a $100 billion annual run rate by the end of this year.

A series of agreements between US and Vietnamese companies in sectors including energy, technology, aviation and finance are expected to be announced next week to coincide with the New York visit of Vietnam's top leader, Communist Party General Secretary and State President To Lam. The plans were revealed by officials and documents obtained by Reuters. An internal planning document lists 29 agreements that could be announced at a business conference in New York on the 23rd, which Lam will also attend. The contents of the document are subject to change, and it does not set out the specific details of the planned agreements. US energy companies Murphy Oil and Chevron are expected to announce agreements with Vietnamese state oil and gas company PetroVietnam, while ExxonMobil is expected to announce an agreement with PetroVietnam Refinery and Petrochemical, Vietnam's second-largest refinery. Vietjet, Vietnam's largest private airline, is expected to announce it will lease up to 22 aircraft from four leasing companies, comprising 17 Boeing 737s and five Airbus A321neos. SpaceX is also set to announce an agreement to provide its Starlink satellite internet service to 120 Vietjet aircraft. The planning document also includes an agreement between US-based Meta and Vietnam's Ministry of Culture, and one between US semiconductor giant Qualcomm and Vietnamese telecom company VNPT. Visa, Mastercard and Citibank are also expected to announce agreements with partners in Vietnam's domestic financial and hospitality services sectors.

Berenberg analyst Michael Filatov issued Buy ratings on Rocket Lab USA and AST SpaceMobile, arguing that falling launch costs have pushed the space economy past $500bn in 2025 and put it on track to exceed $1trn by 2030. Filatov set an $83 price target on Rocket Lab, implying 33% upside, citing the company's vertically integrated launch, manufacturing and applications model, a record $2.36 billion backlog at the end of 2Q26 that was up 137% year-over-year, and 2Q26 revenue of $234 million, up 62% year-over-year and more than $3 million above forecast, alongside a GAAP loss of $0.08 per share. Rocket Lab's Electron rocket has made 95 launches to date, including 16 in 2026, and the company has pushed the first launch of its larger Neutron rocket to early next year, with delivery to the launch pad during 4Q26. For AST SpaceMobile, Filatov set a $92 target, implying 53% upside, pointing to its BlueBird satellite constellation, more than 60 mobile network operator partnerships covering roughly 3 billion subscribers, and a $1.3 billion revenue backlog, though the company's 2Q26 GAAP loss of $0.77 per share missed estimates by $0.48. Rocket Lab carries a Strong Buy consensus with a $110.13 average target, while AST SpaceMobile holds a Moderate Buy consensus with an $88.98 average target.

AT&T announced a deal with Amazon to become the first telecom company in the U.S. to offer broadband satellite services via Amazon Leo, which uses the tech giant's low Earth orbit satellite network. AT&T, which already offers fiber and 5G, says that with satellite services it is now uniquely positioned to provide reliability by bringing together three critical network layers. The move comes as investors have worried that SpaceX's Starlink internet service might chip away at AT&T's market share, and the company has shown it will not be passive in that area. AT&T stock has declined 12% over the past 12 months while the S&P 500 has risen more than 16%, and it trades at less than nine times trailing earnings with a dividend yield of 4.3%, far above the S&P 500 average of around 1.1%.

Auria announced a partnership and contract with Mitsubishi Electric Corporation to deliver next-generation satellite communications capabilities using Auria's Kythera Operating System mission and resource management software. Under the deal, Auria will supply software to dynamically and autonomously manage, optimize, and orchestrate payload and network resources for Mitsubishi Electric's next-generation, software-defined SATCOM satellites, drawing on the Kythera Operating System, part of Auria's HeliOS product line, to enable autonomous service provisioning, real-time resource optimization, orchestration of space and ground assets, and adaptive mission operations. Auria will also provide its KOS Interference Manager module, a HeliOS capability that detects, geolocates, and mitigates signal interference. Auria CEO Damian DiPippa said the combination of Mitsubishi Electric's software-defined satellite hardware with Auria's resource management and mission optimization software will let Mitsubishi Electric customers leverage higher capacity and more flexible, resilient, responsive, and efficient SATCOM services, while Auria SVP Growth Andy Musliner said the partnership marries Mitsubishi Electric's advanced satellite systems with the intelligent software needed to manage and optimize them. Mitsubishi Electric, a pioneer in Japanese space technology since the 1960s, recorded consolidated revenue of 5,894.7 billion yen, or U.S.$ 36.8 billion, in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2026.

SES announced the successful launch of its eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth O3b mPOWER satellites, completing its second-generation medium Earth orbit constellation. The three satellites lifted off at 2:49 pm local time aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. They join the 10 O3b mPOWER spacecraft already in operation, bringing the full constellation to 13 satellites offering services ranging from tens of Mbps to multiple gigabits per second of capacity to any site. CEO Adel Al-Saleh called the launch a defining milestone that reinforces SES's ability to deliver resilient, secure and scalable connectivity for governments, enterprises, cloud providers and mobility customers. The newly launched satellites are expected to become operational by mid-2027, expanding high-performance connectivity capacity in underserved and remote environments and advancing SES's next-generation MEO network strategy.

Jim Cramer picked Space Exploration Technologies Corp. as his fantasy flex player on the September 8 episode of Mad Money, citing the company's multi-faceted growth across rockets, Starlink and AI. SpaceX reported second-quarter total revenue of $7.8 billion, up over 90% year-over-year and beating Wall Street estimates by nearly $1 billion, with a Q2 GAAP EPS of -$0.09 that also outperformed estimates. The connectivity segment, supported by Starlink, reached 12 million subscribers, while enterprise and government demand pushed segment revenue higher, and the stock trades at roughly 50x to 68x forward sales estimates with a market capitalization hovering near $2 trillion. The company still reported a net loss of $541 million for the quarter, with quarterly capital expenditures running at nearly $18.4 billion to fund Starship manufacturing and orbital compute infrastructure alongside Connectivity and Space operations. Insider Monkey's database of over 1000 hedge funds shows 119 hedge funds held SpaceX during Q2, with VY Capital holding the most prominent position at 271.8 million shares, followed by BAMCO Inc. with nearly 145.8 million shares.

SpaceX has signed an AI hosting agreement worth about $1.11 billion a month, roughly $13 billion a year at the initial rate, with the deal beginning Dec. 1. The rocket and satellite company behind Starlink and Starship said the contract gives management more confidence that SpaceX can exit the year at a $100 billion annual recurring revenue run rate. SpaceX expects to finish the year with a little more than 2 gigawatts of terrestrial computing capacity and wants to reach 5 to 10 gigawatts next year, using Nvidia processors, with current hosting agreements generating roughly $30 to $50 in revenue per watt. Many hosting contracts run for only about six months, and SpaceX eventually wants some of that computing capacity for its own products, while it pursues the larger bet of putting AI computing in orbit. The new contract matters to investors because it gives SpaceX cash while that orbital plan develops, with the next test being whether the short-term hosting deals can become a durable business and whether Starship can eventually make orbital computing economically viable.

SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen said the company is targeting its first orbital compute satellites for next year, with huge amounts of compute going into space by 2028. Speaking Thursday at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Tech conference, Johnsen said the timeline is far shorter than people had expected. He also said another Starship flight later this month will be revenue-generating and carry production V3 Starlink satellites. Evercore ISI analyst Kutgun Maral reiterated an Outperform rating on the stock, saying the roadmap is getting more specific but Starship cadence and reuse remain the common execution dependency across broadband, Mobile and orbital compute. SpaceX shares rallied from an intraday low of $104.83 on Aug. 3 to nearly $150 this month, against a record high of $225.64 reached shortly after its June public market debut, while its second-quarter capital expenditures of $18.4 billion came in well above analyst estimates of around $6 billion.

Britain's Ministry of Defence became the first government outside the United States to publicly confirm it uses Starshield, the military variant of Starlink built by SpaceX, a disclosure Reuters reported on September 10 that included UK spending of nearly $40 million on the company's satellite services. The UK deployment is small in dollar terms but operational, with the capped Starshield service tier in Britain including five terabytes of monthly data and per-terminal hardware starting at £4,000. SpaceX has already booked over $6 billion in multi-year U.S. government Starshield contracts from Space Force for LEO-based communications and sensing, and Gwynne Shotwell told analysts on the second-quarter call that the company won more than $6 billion in U.S. contracts in Q2 supporting major Space Force programs. Enterprise & Government revenue reached $1.806 billion in the quarter, up 108% year over year, driven by airline partnerships and Starshield, while Starlink ended the quarter with 12.0 million subscribers and Connectivity revenue of $4.29 billion, up 66% year over year. SpaceX spent $18.37 billion in capex in the quarter, with $15.83 billion directed to AI compute infrastructure, while posting a $541 million net loss, and the FY 2027 Space Force request includes $9.8 billion in Satellite Communication and $10.8 billion in Space-Based Sensing and Targeting.

Eutelsat announced on September 11, 2026, the extension and expansion of its long-standing partnership with StarTV, part of Grupo W Com, one of Mexico's leading direct-to-home television providers, for continued delivery of satellite television and next-gen services via the EUTELSAT 117 West B satellite. Under the renewed multi-year agreement, StarTV will expand its use of satellite capacity on EUTELSAT 117° West B to support the growth of its service portfolio, including direct-to-home television, educational content initiatives, and NVOD, or Near Video On Demand, over IP across Mexico. The deal reinforces the 117° West orbital position as one of the most important video neighborhoods in Mexico and Latin America. Jean-François Fallacher, CEO of Eutelsat, said the expanded partnership shows how satellite continues to evolve alongside the changing video landscape, expanding access to high-quality entertainment and digital services across Mexico. Jose Aguirré Campos, CEO of Grupo W Com, said the partnership has allowed the company to offer low cost pay TV services in Mexico and to launch new services such as NVOD via Broadcast, which is expected to help reduce churn and give customers access to movies and TV shows, especially in remote places without accessible ISPs.

SES announced the launch of SES CORE, a first-of-its-kind content orchestration and hybrid delivery platform that lets broadcasters and media customers manage, monitor and enable transmission of content via satellite, fiber and IP through a single interface. Built on an infrastructure-neutral architecture, the platform brings multiple distribution technologies into a unified orchestration layer so customers can select the most effective delivery path while guaranteeing service reliability and consistent delivery of high-quality content to global partners. SES CORE gives customers real-time visibility into service status by monitoring active content feeds, provides network performance insights, automates operational tasks and offers redundancy options, helping broadcasters manage distribution more independently and efficiently. Deepak Mathur, President of Media at SES, said broadcasters are navigating increasingly complex distribution environments and that SES CORE provides a unified platform designed for the future of content orchestration and hybrid delivery. SES, headquartered in Luxembourg and listed on the Paris and Luxembourg stock exchanges under the ticker SESG, said the launch follows its Intelsat acquisition and more than 100 years of combined global industry leadership.

Pivotal Research initiated coverage of SpaceX on September 8 with a Buy rating and a $220 price target, implying roughly 49% upside from recent trading levels. Analyst Jeffrey Wlodarczak framed the entire investment case around a single variable, writing that SpaceX's roughly $2 trillion valuation rests almost entirely on Starship reusability, with each vehicle needing to fly 20 to 50 times with relatively cheap, fast refurbishment between launches. He argued that success would let SpaceX deploy far more Starlink satellite capacity and collect tolls from other companies operating in orbit, while failure would leave SpaceX "a different and much smaller company." The call lands amid a wide range of Wall Street views, with targets across 37 analysts spanning $62 to $450 and roughly three-quarters rating the stock a Buy, after SpaceX priced its June IPO at $135 a share and raised $85.7 billion in the largest public offering in history. Second-quarter capital expenditures hit $18.4 billion, including $15.83 billion for AI infrastructure, prompting Bank of America to reiterate a Buy rating and $235 target, JPMorgan to raise its target to $240, Wells Fargo to cut to $215 from $230, and Piper Sandler to lower its target to $140. More than 300 million additional SpaceX shares become eligible for sale on September 9, with a second tranche of similar size scheduled for September 24.

SpaceX is overhauling how it builds its data centers, a shift that could slow the pace of new construction, according to a report from The Information. A new management team drawn from the company's rocket division is prioritizing reliability over speed, installing more backup power and cooling systems and testing them more thoroughly before data centers go live, a departure from the rapid buildout of the Colossus campus in Tennessee, where xAI brought its first data center online in just 122 days. That speed brought trade-offs including frequent outages, and a construction-related outage at the Memphis facility last week knocked some Grok models offline and affected compute customers including Anthropic and Google. More than a dozen data-center leaders have left in recent weeks and been replaced by SpaceX engineers, and CEO Elon Musk wrote on X after the outage that the company was taking corrective action to ensure it does not happen again. Separately, Reuters reported that the UK has spent nearly $40 million on SpaceX satellite services, including around $17.6 million on Starshield, the military-grade version of Starlink with enhanced encryption, and $22.3 million on standard Starlink, deploying about 1,000 Starshield and 500 Starlink terminals, making the UK the first country outside the US to publicly acknowledge using Starshield. The gains came as SpaceX absorbed new share supply, with about 319 million insider shares, around 7% of insider stock, becoming eligible for sale on Wednesday, the 90-day mark since SpaceX's June 12th IPO. SpaceX went public at $135 a share in June, raising a record $85.7 billion at a $1.77 trillion valuation while floating less than 5% of its stock.

Wells Fargo analyst Steven Cahall said on a September 8 CNBC segment that SpaceX's satellite-plus-spectrum wireless push will hurt incumbent carriers while tower REITs and cable operators quietly profit, arguing the architecture needs far less ground infrastructure than a traditional fourth carrier. The FCC has cleared SpaceX to absorb 65 MHz of EchoStar's U.S. spectrum, which management plans to integrate later next year, and Starlink subscribers doubled year over year to 12.0 million as of Q2 2026. SpaceX's Q2 connectivity revenue reached $4.29 billion, up 66% year over year, on total Q2 revenue of $7.81 billion, $3.54 billion of adjusted EBITDA and a $93.5 billion cash position. Cahall named towers and a Wi-Fi offload MVNO with cable as the potential sector winners, noting Crown Castle yields around 5.5% after its fiber divestiture while AT&T contributes 28% of site rental revenue, and Charter's Spectrum Mobile added 406,000 lines with mobile service revenue up 18.9% year over year to $1.095 billion. The thesis carries a real hole: if SpaceX routes around U.S. towers entirely with its own rooftop equipment, the tower leasing bump never lands, and Crown Castle has said only that its sites offer space, power and backhaul with no signed agreement yet. T-Mobile is seen as most exposed because its Direct-to-Cell partnership loses differentiation once SpaceX controls its own spectrum, with TMUS shares down 23.18% over the past year, while Verizon's fixed wireless net additions fell 30.6% year over year.

Iridium Communications and Deutsche Telekom IoT announced the successful transmission of a voice message over Iridium NTN Direct in a demonstration with Toyota, following the completion of technical integration and a global roaming agreement between the two companies. The message was sent from a Toyota vehicle equipped with a Nordic Semiconductor nRF9151 development board and a Deutsche Telekom IoT SIM, and was transmitted entirely via the Iridium satellite network during Telekom Satellite Day 2026. The first message sent, "testing, testing, one, two, freeway," demonstrated standards-based NB-IoT voice messaging over Iridium's fully operational low-Earth orbit satellite constellation, supported by Fraunhofer's AI-based NESC Voice Codec, which operates at bitrates of 1 kb/s or less. With the roaming agreement now completed, eligible Deutsche Telekom IoT customers using compatible standards-based NB-IoT devices will be able to roam between terrestrial networks and Iridium satellites, and selected European customers are already testing applications on the Iridium network using Deutsche Telekom's Global SIM. Iridium NTN Direct is slated for commercial availability in Q4 2026, extending coverage through Iridium's existing global L-band LEO constellation for automotive, logistics, remote utilities, smart agriculture and emergency response applications.

Textron Aviation Inc., a Textron Inc. company, announced that Starlink high-speed internet is now available for Hawker 700, 800, and 900 series aircraft, following the FAA's issuance of AeroMech's Supplemental Type Certificate. The STC includes the Starlink Aviation Performance Kit, which uses Starlink's Low Earth Orbit satellites to provide reliable connectivity over land, water, and remote areas. Hawker operators can schedule installation at North American Textron Aviation Service Centers and select international service centers. The system supports streaming, video calls, and gaming with download speeds up to 1 Gbps, upload speeds up to 100 Mbps, and latency as low as 20 ms. Brad White, senior vice president of Customer Support, emphasized the company's commitment to supporting the Hawker fleet through this upgrade.

Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Vodafone Group, and Telefónica, four major European telecom operators, are in early discussions to establish a consortium to participate in the EU's satellite frequency auction and provide direct-to-mobile communications services. Bloomberg reported, citing sources familiar with the matter. The four companies aim to jointly win the allocation of the 2 GHz band that the EU reserves for operators within the bloc, but a final decision has not yet been made. In May, the EU announced plans to allocate most satellite frequencies for mobile phones to European companies. The European Commission will allocate two-thirds of the frequencies for the multi-orbit satellite constellation "IRIS2," consisting of 290 satellites, to commercial use, and distribute them equally between EU and non-EU operators. The consortium is expected to bid for the EU operator quota. IRIS2 is Europe's initiative to counter SpaceX's Starlink.

SpaceX's fair value estimate has risen modestly from about US$213.50 to about US$222.32, reflecting a small reset in analysts' central case even as Street price targets range widely from US$75 to US$800. The adjustment comes amid bullish takes from Oppenheimer, UBS, Goldman Sachs, and Macquarie, which highlight SpaceX as a vertically integrated AI and space platform, while bearish firms like CFRA and HSBC flag valuation risks and execution challenges. Recent developments include a US$100 billion Starbase Louisiana spaceport project with construction targeted for 2027, the closing of a US$60 billion all-stock acquisition of AI coding startup Cursor, and an AI-focused partnership with Nvidia to build an orbital data center network. The revenue growth assumption in the model has shifted from about 117.91% to about 115.09%, profit margin from about 29.56% to about 30.03%, and the future P/E multiple from about 60.32x to about 64.30x, while the discount rate remains effectively unchanged at about 7.24%.