00:00On Thursday afternoon, SpaceX agreed to buy nationwide low-band Spectrum.
00:05By Friday's close, T-Mobile had fallen 13.3%, AT and T-10.9, Verizon 10.1.
00:13Investors were repricing what actually protects a wireless carrier.
00:18But owning Spectrum is not the same as operating a nationwide mobile network.
00:23The seller is Grain Management, a private investment firm that owns a nationwide 800 MHz portfolio.
00:31SpaceX is buying all of it.
00:33The 817 to 824 and 862 to 869 MHz blocks, up to 14 MHz of paired low-band Spectrum.
00:44Financial terms were not disclosed.
00:47The Wall Street Journal has reported the price at about $8 billion.
00:51And it has not happened yet.
00:54The agreement is subject to approval by the Federal Communications Commission and to customary closing conditions.
01:02Nothing has transferred.
01:03Low-band Spectrum matters because of physics.
01:06Longer wavelengths travel further and pass through obstacles.
01:10In SpaceX's own words, this layer ensures Starlink Mobile's signal penetrates through obstacles such as walls,
01:18and can provide service to customers' devices even when they are in buildings.
01:23That is the thing a satellite-only service cannot do.
01:26Put together, SpaceX says Starlink Mobile would be the first network operator to deploy both satellite and terrestrial Spectrum.
01:35Satellites for reach, low-band on the ground for buildings and dead zones.
01:39Here is the part that makes this sting.
01:41This is the Spectrum T-Mobile sold.
01:44T-Mobile transferred its own 800 MHz portfolio to Grain for $2.9 billion in cash plus Grain's 600 MHz
01:54licenses.
01:55The Federal Communications Commission approved it on the 1st of July, and it completed on the 11th of August.
02:02Two months later, the buyer agreed to sell it to a competitor.
02:05The market split cleanly.
02:08The carriers fell.
02:09T-Mobile 13.3, AT&T 10.9, Verizon 10.1.
02:15ASD Space Mobile, the other satellite-to-phone company, fell 10.5.
02:20The tower operators went the other way.
02:22Crown Castle up 15.6, American Tower up 9.4, SBA up 7.4.
02:29Any terrestrial network still needs somewhere to hang the radios.
02:33Now the other side.
02:36Spectrum is a license, not a network.
02:39SpaceX still needs the FCC to approve the transfer.
02:43It then needs to build terrestrial infrastructure, or rent it, across the country.
02:48The carriers it is challenging have spent decades and hundreds of billions of dollars doing exactly that.
02:55Deployment takes years, it has to be financed, and execution is the part nobody can verify in advance.
03:03Friday's move priced a threat.
03:04It did not price a network that exists.
03:07We don't pay for a package that is theanciers.
03:07If you have a Dublin bar place.
03:07If you have any questions on the couch, it's only 61.1.
