Breaking News:
SpaceX $SPCX and Qualcomm just announced a multi-year deal to build Starlink Mobile’s nationwide terrestrial 5G network in the U.S., with rollout starting in 2027.
Qualcomm’s Dragonwing QRU100 and QDU100 platforms will power tens of thousands of cell sites, using 64T64R Massive MIMO for better coverage, capacity, and spectrum efficiency. Power-efficient processing improves deployment economics at scale, and the architecture supports multiple bands with a path to AI-native 6G.
The goal: the first fully integrated satellite-plus-terrestrial mobile network in the country. Satellites overhead, 5G on the ground, one seamless experience.
Qualcomm calls it its biggest 5G deal to date. Financial terms weren’t disclosed. This puts SpaceX on a direct collision course with AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile — and it’s another data point that SPCX is building infrastructure, not just rockets.