SpaceX is looking to buy Boost Mobile from EchoStar, according to a report from The Washington Post. If the deal goes through, it would help the Elon Musk-owned company build a hybrid cellular-satellite network that could help catapult it into fourth place among the top U.S. wireless providers.<\/p>\n
The space-launch company has been dabbling in cellular connectivity, rolling out satellite access to T-Mobile\u2019s subscribers in 2024. Last year, SpaceX bought $17 billion worth of wireless spectrum from EchoStar for cellular services, which could help the company\u2019s Starlink service reach inside buildings, for example, something it currently struggles with.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the last critical piece of the spectrum puzzle needed for SpaceX to provide complete phone coverage in America,\u201d Musk said on X at the time of the spectrum acquisition. Yet, if Musk is still looking to buy access to terrestrial networks, it apparently wasn\u2019t the last piece.<\/p>\n
Elon Musk, SpaceX\u2019s CEO, reportedly spoke directly with EchoStar chairman Charlie Ergen in October about acquiring Boost Mobile, the mobile virtual network operator. EchoStar has about 7.5 million customers between Boost Mobile and Gen Mobile, its other mobile service offering.<\/p>\n
Musk has also approached AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon about buying capacity on their networks. All three rejected Musk, and they may still have a say in a SpaceX acquisition of Boost Mobile. Boost doesn\u2019t operate its own towers, instead leasing capacity from AT&T and T-Mobile, which might need to approve such a deal. Sources speaking to The Post said that network leases are usually nontransferable.<\/p>\n
The big three providers each have over 100 million subscribers, dwarfing Boost Mobile. But while the acquisition would give SpaceX an immediate bump in subscribers, the true value of the deal would be giving the company access to terrestrial cellular networks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gaining access to towers leased to Boost Mobile would expand coverage significantly \u2014 Boost currently covers most of the 48 contiguous states in the U.S. \u2014 allowing Starlink to cover devices when they\u2019re outdoors and relying on cell towers to handle devices when Starlink signals can\u2019t reach them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/starlink-direct-to-cell.jpg?resize=1200,601″] SpaceX is looking to buy Boost Mobile from EchoStar, according to a report from The Washington Post. If the deal goes through, it would help the Elon Musk-owned company build a hybrid cellular-satellite network that could help catapult it into fourth place among the top U.S. wireless providers. The space-launch company has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,62],"class_list":["post-2235230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-techcrunch-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2235230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2235230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2235230\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2235230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2235230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2235230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}