Vodafone PLC (LON:VOD) has made an investment to future-proof its business by backing a superfast ‘space broadband’ company, which will compete with Elon Musk's Starlink and Amazon’s planned Project Kuiper.
Vodafone is one of the lead investors in Texas-based AST & Science’s low-Earth orbit (LEO) service, which launched a satellite in April 2019 and says its SpaceMobile service is on course to be the first in the world to provide 4G and 5G connections direct to consumer smartphones.
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With the fresh round of investment from the FTSE 100 company and Japan’s Rakuten, American Tower and Samsung, AST & Science has now raised capital of US$128mln for SpaceMobile.
AST founder Abel Avellan said: “SpaceMobile will be particularly transformative to the growing US$1trn annual global mobile market because it will eliminate the coverage gaps faced by today's five billion mobile subscribers moving in and out of connectivity every day.
“It will also help the world's most under-served communities to access the latest mobile services much sooner than predicted, helping more people to access the digital economy.”
Separately Vodafone has agreed to a strategic partnership and will contribute technical, operational and regulatory expertise in support of the global deployment of SpaceMobile.
Vodafone CEO Nick Read said: “We believe SpaceMobile is uniquely placed to provide universal mobile coverage, further enhancing our leading network across Europe and Africa - especially in rural areas and during a natural or humanitarian disaster - for customers on their existing smartphones.”
Launch soon?
AST said it has successfully tested the SpaceMobile technology from its satellite and has been further validating the technology following that initial flight.
No date has yet been published for when the service will be operational.
Musk’s Starlink, which may be spun out of the main SpaceX parent company in coming years, is aiming to offer a satellite internet service to consumers from its ‘constellation’ of LEO mini-satellites in 2020, with plans to deliver global coverage by the end of the year.
Starlink’s service will require user terminals on Earth, but CEO Musk said the terminal installed at his house is already operational, claiming he used it to send a tweet last October.
Sending this tweet through space via Starlink satellite ????
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 22, 2019
Whoa, it worked!!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 22, 2019