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Starlink's purchase of EchoStar spectrum likely done with the additional goal of getting Apple to abandon plans with Globalstar and work with Starlink instead.
09.08.25 SpaceX disrupts everyone’s plans again… My post last week on the potential scenarios for EchoStar assumed that the buyer of EchoStar’s spectrum would be a terrestrial player, because only using the spectrum terrestrially could produce a return that justified paying Charlie Ergen’s asking price. 12 months ago that was true when the rumors were that SpaceX was only willing to pay a few billion dollars for access to EchoStar’s AWS-4 spectrum.
That was evident in the article published by The Information in May, where Apple staff working on the D2D project with Globalstar expressed concerns that their bosses would cancel the effort and decide to partner with SpaceX instead. And we’ve seen more on that front in recent months, as Globalstar’s new satellites have been delayed, and Apple was apparently forced to support Starlink on the iPhone 13 in order to secure a new launch slot. He has publicly toyed with the idea on social media at times, but he has also made it clear he doesn’t want to deal with the headaches of such a monumental effort.
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