FCC chairman Brendan Carr, talking on a panel session at the wireless CTIA event in Washington last week, said that the market for direct-to-phone (D2D) service needs more than one competitor to Starlink.

“We think the market wants to be, should be, at least three facilities-based providers,” Carr told the CTIA’s recently appointed president/CEO Ajit Pai, himself the immediate past chairman of the FCC. The two were speaking about the prospects for D2D, and the impact of an upcoming FCC-managed C-band auction.

Carr gave an on-stage shout-out to AST SpaceMobile and Amazon Leo, two rivals to Starlink. AST is planning to use SpaceX to launch its next three batches of satellites.

The FCC has already fast-tracked SpaceX’s application to launch up to 1 million satellites as orbiting data centres.

Carr also mentioned plans to auction the upper C-band spectrum in mid-2027.

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Categories: Articles, Broadband, Satellite

Tags: Brendan Carr, FCC, starlink