SpaceX’s president and COO, Gwynne Shotwell, told analysts during the company’s Q2 earnings call that the business will turn into a fully-fledged mobile telco, and will hit the ‘Big Three’ (Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile) in the process. These three make roughly $600 billion (€520bn) a year, and Starlink sees that market as ripe for picking.

Shotwell said the company plans to launch its next-generation Starlink Mobile satellites in 2027 and start providing an upgraded service by the end of that year. SpaceX will use the 65 MHz of terrestrial spectrum being acquired from EchoStar. Instead of a traditional macro/mesh network, SpaceX is talking about using small stations tied to its Starlink dishes.

“You will have not only the capacity from the satellites themselves, but you will have a buildout of the terrestrial, basically the hardware and systems necessary to make a true mobile service exactly what you want it to be,” she added. “I anticipate us to be able to acquire quite a few of their customers, because I think our service will be better. We will eliminate dead zones,” leveraging the satellites to cover areas unreachable by a land-based network.

Elon Musk, speaking on the call, was equally buoyant, saying that Starlink could deliver the majority of the planet’s Internet within 10 years, and that his service would probably be better than anything currently available from current terrestrial providers.

“It’s not out of the question that at some point Starlink will deliver a majority of the world’s Internet, at least in countries where we’re allowed to operate, which is the vast majority of countries […] in less than 10 years,” noted Musk.

SpaceX revealed its first results after the market closed on August 4th, which were better than most analysts expected. SpaceX announced losses of $541 million in the three months from April to June, from $1 billion a year earlier, and less than half what financial analysts had expected this time.

SpaceX’s revenue beat expectations, jumping to $7.8 billion, up around 92 per cent from the same period the previous year when it was $4.1 billion, on strong growth in its Starlink satellite-Internet and AI businesses. However, the company’s capital expenditure mushroomed to more than $18 billion, from $2.8 billion in the same period last year.

Starlink itself hit 12 million subscribers by June 30th, having grown 1.7 million during Q2. The company also plans to launch gigabit V3 satellites into operational orbit during the next Starship test flight. ARPU for Starlink was $66 per month.

The earnings report saw even higher revenue growth from Starlink’s enterprise and government customers, up 63 per cent sequentially and 108 per cent year-over-year to $1.8 billion. “I would expect enterprise revenue to substantially exceed consumer revenue,” Musk added, focusing on the potential business and government demand.

SpaceX stated: “2026 has been a momentous year so far, and the second quarter demonstrated the true power of SpaceX. Revenue growth accelerated across all our business segments and we delivered strong operating leverage, with significant margin expansion led by our new AI compute agreements. Our unparalleled leadership in launch, Starlink subscriber growth, new enterprise and government partnerships, and best-in-class AI infrastructure underscore our ability to drive meaningful scale and deliver attractive returns.”

Highlights Q2 2026 Results

• Demonstrated the power of extreme vertical integration, delivering revenue growth of 92 per cent year-over-year across Space, Connectivity and AI
• Completed two successful Starship V3 flight tests in the past 90 days, advancing towards full and rapid reusability
• Closed multiple industry-leading Cloud Services Agreements resulting in $14.1 billion of contracted sales
• Announced agreement to acquire Cursor for $60 billion to accelerate the AI enterprise opportunity
• Released its most powerful AI model yet with Grok 4.5 in July
• Delivered 66 per cent revenue and 79 per cent income from operations growth year-over-year for the Connectivity segment, driven by a doubling of Starlink Subscribers and continued momentum in Enterprise & Government
• Awarded over $6 billion in multi-year US government contracts for Starshield

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Categories: Articles, Broadband, Business, MNO, Mobile, Results, Satellite

Tags: elon musk, Gwynne Shotwell, spacex, starlink