A hundred billion in market cap evaporated in a day. On Friday, every headline screamed “SpaceX declares war on telecom.”
T-Mobile fell 13%, and the comments section was already writing the telecom operators’ obituaries.
But I noticed one detail while watching the market: tower companies were up.
Crown Castle and American Tower—both rose that same day.
If satellites were really going to wipe out cell towers, tower companies should have fallen too.
The fact that they rose suggests investors are betting that ground infrastructure won’t disappear—but the people collecting rent on it might be replaced.
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Starlink Mobile has secured low-band spectrum, giving it the ability to reach indoors.
But its bandwidth is narrow and latency is high; it’s still a long way from replacing the everyday mobile experience.
But it doesn’t actually need to replace it. It only needs to convince the market that “replacement is possible” for telecom operators’ valuations to collapse. You can’t defend against an opponent that doesn’t need cell towers by simply building more cell towers.
Friday was the teaser. But that teaser was already worth a hundred billion.
#SPCX $SPCX
T-Mobile fell 13%, and the comments section was already writing the telecom operators’ obituaries.
But I noticed one detail while watching the market: tower companies were up.
Crown Castle and American Tower—both rose that same day.
If satellites were really going to wipe out cell towers, tower companies should have fallen too.
The fact that they rose suggests investors are betting that ground infrastructure won’t disappear—but the people collecting rent on it might be replaced.
//
Starlink Mobile has secured low-band spectrum, giving it the ability to reach indoors.
But its bandwidth is narrow and latency is high; it’s still a long way from replacing the everyday mobile experience.
But it doesn’t actually need to replace it. It only needs to convince the market that “replacement is possible” for telecom operators’ valuations to collapse. You can’t defend against an opponent that doesn’t need cell towers by simply building more cell towers.
Friday was the teaser. But that teaser was already worth a hundred billion.
#SPCX $SPCX