SpaceX Sets Early 2028 for Own D2D Mobile Service Launch

SpaceX plans to switch on its own direct-to-device (D2D) mobile service in early 2028, following the launch of a second-generation Starlink Mobile constellation during 2027 and the integration of low-band spectrum it is now acquiring, president Gwynne Shotwell told the company's Q3 earnings call on 20 October.

The timeline hinges on two recent moves. Earlier this month, on 8 October, SpaceX agreed to buy up to 14MHz of paired spectrum in the 800MHz band from Grain Management, a deal expected to close in the first half of 2027 subject to regulatory approval. The Federal Communications Commission has also approved the launch of 15,000 next-generation V2 satellites.

Shotwell said the spectrum purchase and the FCC clearance together "pave the way for Starlink Mobile to become a major mobile carrier in the US."

How will the hybrid network work?

SpaceX intends to pair its satellites with ground-based radios to deliver 5G mobile coverage — an architecture many industry executives consider far-fetched. Shotwell referenced comments from the previous quarter's call about smaller radios for the D2D service, which she described as not quite tower capable, that SpaceX could place on homes and businesses where Starlink is already installed.

"So, it's not just the spectrum that we've talked about with the S-band," she said. "We will basically leverage the real estate from Starlink installs and other towers."

The approach would turn existing Starlink customer premises into a distributed terrestrial radio layer — a model with no large-scale precedent among satellite operators, and one SpaceX has yet to detail publicly.

What is Musk claiming?

Asked about the respective roles of the satellite and terrestrial networks, CEO Elon Musk declined to elaborate, saying a fuller presentation would be needed to explain why the company believes Starlink's connectivity business could eventually generate several hundred billion dollars in annual revenue.

"You are missing some of the pieces that we know about internally," Musk said. "I can say we do see a clear path to several hundred billion dollars a year in connectivity revenue, but I think we should probably describe that in more detail in a forum that's not limited to a few minutes at an earnings call."

For scale, several hundred billion dollars a year would put Starlink's connectivity ambitions in the same revenue territory as the world's largest telecom operators. Musk offered no timeline, no subscriber targets and no breakdown of how satellite, terrestrial and D2D revenue would combine to reach that figure. The company has not yet scheduled the promised detailed presentation.

What did Q3 deliver?

The results marked SpaceX's second earnings report since its June stock market listing, and the swing was substantial. The company posted net income of $4.4 billion for the quarter ending 30 September, against a $1.1 billion loss a year earlier, as revenue more than doubled to $14.6 billion — up 161% year-on-year.

The driver was not connectivity but the Super Intelligence segment, previously reported as AI. It accounted for roughly $6.7 billion of the approximately $9 billion revenue increase, with segment revenue rising to $7.6 billion from $813 million. SpaceX attributed the growth to new cloud services agreements, the Cursor acquisition and growing use of Grok.

Group income from operations reached $2.8 billion, compared with a $273 million loss a year ago, while adjusted EBITDA rose 306% to $8.8 billion.

Starlink's subscriber momentum

Connectivity revenue rose 69% year-on-year to $5.2 billion, with operating income up 99% to $2.4 billion. Starlink counted 13.6 million consumer broadband subscribers at quarter-end, adding 1.6 million in three months and up from 7.2 million in Q3 2025 — nearly doubling its base in a year.

Starlink Mobile, the D2D service, surpassed 22 million monthly users at the end of the quarter, up 37% from the previous quarter.

The company remains loss-making for the year to date, with a nine-month net loss of $413 million.

If the Grain Management spectrum deal clears regulators on schedule in the first half of 2027 and the second-generation constellation launches on time, SpaceX's first fully owned D2D service could reach US phones — under its own spectrum, not a partner carrier's — in early 2028.