Why Elon Musk wants to sell you cell service

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So habits and proficiency form naturally. When every person on your team works at their best. That's when your AI investment starts to compound. See what superhuman can do at superhuman dot com. Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Neil Ipotel, editor in chief The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today I'm talking to Walter Pisic, a partner and analyst at Light Shed Partners, who covers tech, media, and telecom about SpaceX's recently announced plans to become a major wireless carrier. Last week, SpaceX agreed to buy a big chunk of low-band spectrum to expand the Starlink network.

And spectrum's been trade around the telecom business for decades now. but SpaceX's ambitious plan is to build, quote, the world's most advanced mobile network. Combined with the news that the FCC approved the deployment of 15,000 next-gen Starlink satellites, and the company's previous agreement to purchase$20 billion worth of Echo Star Spectrum last year, it's now clear that SpaceX is serious about competing with ATT Verizon and T-Motor. I've covered the telecom business for a long time, and I've always known these companies can say they want to do something until they run into the harsh reality of how expensive it is to actually do it. The telecom graveyard of pivots, bad ideas, and failed acquisitions is vast. Walt has been closely monitoring SpaceX acquisitions though, and he's correctly predicted that SpaceX was headed in this direction for months now.

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