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Fiber: the unsexy winner
AT&T CEO John Stankey went on the record and swatted down Elon Musk’s Starlink cellular ambitions, saying there are “a whole bunch of reasons” the plan won’t work. His core argument is pretty simple: fiber is faster, cheaper to scale in the places that matter, and—annoyingly for the space crowd—hard to beat with satellites.
The physics problem keeps showing up
Stankey told Axios that fiber is roughly three times faster than satellite networks and that even under a best-case, decade-long buildout, satellites still wouldn’t top it. He also questioned the economics of putting cellular base stations into the mix, saying it would cost about as much as building a macro network anyway.
Why investors should care
This isn’t just telecom people talking smack in a group chat. SpaceX just got FCC approval for international telecom services, and the agency is also weighing a big spectrum expansion for satellite broadband on September 30th. So the regulatory door is opening, but the business model still has to survive a very practical test: can it actually compete with boring old wire in the ground?
Big picture
T-Mobile also recently downplayed Starlink as a serious threat, which tells you the incumbents aren’t exactly losing sleep yet. The satellite-direct-to-phone market may still be real—but for now, AT&T is reminding everyone that the future has to survive a brutal little boss fight called “math.”