SpaceX Defends Starlink Cellular Against Verizon and AT&T's Interference Claims in FCC Battle

SpaceX has responded strongly to recent allegations from Verizon and AT&T regarding potential interference from its Starlink Cellular service. In a letter to the FCC, SpaceX accused its competitors of attempting to undermine its partnership with T-Mobile while favoring their ventures.

SpaceX Fires Back at Verizon and AT&T, Defending Starlink Cellular Plans Amid FCC Dispute

SpaceX responded to Verizon and AT&T's recent allegations regarding Starlink Cellular.

“While the petitions from AT&T, Verizon, Dish/EchoStar, and Omnispace lack technical basis or legal merit, their game is clear. AT&T and Verizon seek to hamstring their competitor T-Mobile by talking out of both sides of their mouths, on one hand demanding without technical support that T-Mobile and SpaceX operate at unnecessarily low power levels that will force Americans to sacrifice service while giving their own partner AST a free pass,” wrote SpaceX in a recent letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

In 2022, SpaceX and T-Mobile announced their partnership to eliminate mobile inactive zones. The partners anticipate introducing Starlink Cellular in the autumn of 2024.

SpaceX submitted a waiver request to the FCC in June 2024, requesting that Starlink Cellular be permitted to operate beyond conventional radio frequency parameters. At the commencement of August, AT&T and Verizon submitted letters to the FCC urging them to deny SpaceX's proposals for Starlink Cellular.

SpaceX Challenges AT&T and Verizon's Interference Claims, Criticizes Secret Study and Competitor Collaboration

AT&T and Verizon alleged that SpaceX's Starlink Cellular would produce excessive radio interference if permitted to operate beyond its standard parameters. AT&T purportedly examined SpaceX's Starlink satellites. The study hypothesized that Starlink satellites would "cause an 18% average reduction in network downlink throughput" if permitted to operate beyond standard radio frequency parameters.

SpaceX criticizes AT&T's analysis results in its letter, emphasizing that its competitor has declined to disclose the study's data to the Commission. Additionally, SpaceX underscores that AT&T and Verizon have collaborated with AST SpaceMobile, a competitor of Starlink. Additionally, T-Mobile submitted a letter to the FCC asserting that AT&T's technical analysis is faulty.

“AT&T goes so far as to claim to have conducted a secret study it refuses to show the Commission to support suppressing SpaceX’s out-of-band emissions to an interference-protection level ten times below the limit sufficient to protect terrestrial networks while allowing its partner AST to exceed that limit,” wrote SpaceX.