SpaceX · Starlink · 23 Oct 2026
SpaceX wants at least 80,000 US cell sites for Starlink Mobile. That's about half of America's cell towers
SpaceX is in talks with tower owners, including Crown Castle, to get access to at least 80,000 cell sites across the US, Bloomberg reported Thursday evening. That would be about half of the country's purpose-built towers, and it's the clearest sign yet that Starlink Mobile is being built as a full fourth phone carrier, not just a satellite backup. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile each fell more than 4% before the bell on Friday. Nothing is signed yet. Here's what is done, what is only talk, and what the numbers say.
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What was reported
Bloomberg's Kelcee Griffis reported on (shown in your time zone), that SpaceX "aims to secure a minimum of 80,000 cell sites across the US" and is in talks with at least one major tower company. Bloomberg named Crown Castle as one of them. The report is based on unnamed people familiar with the talks, and it says the deals "could reach into the billions."
No one has confirmed a deal. SpaceX didn't respond to Bloomberg, and American Tower declined to comment. Crown Castle CEO Chris Hillabrant was asked on his company's earnings call on Wednesday, Oct. 21, whether it was talking about leases with SpaceX, Amazon or other satellite companies. He said, "You can assume that we're talking to all parties," and wouldn't discuss specific customers.
Sawyer Merritt shared the story on X at , calling it the start of a "fourth major carrier in the U.S."
Starlink Mobile will become the first network operator to deploy both satellite and terrestrial spectrum, and be a huge disruptor.
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) October 22, 2026
We're finally going to have a fourth major carrier in the U.S.
Why a satellite company needs towers
Satellites are great at covering empty places. They're weak inside buildings and in crowded cities, where one beam has to serve a lot of phones. Towers fix both problems, which is why AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile rent space on them instead of relying on anything in the sky.
Musk has been open about the plan. On SpaceX's third-quarter earnings call on Tuesday, Oct. 20, he said, "We will be building out our terrestrial networks so there's broad-based connectivity anywhere that SpaceX and Starlink are allowed to operate," according to Bloomberg. He said satellite launches plus new spectrum "will pave the way for Starlink Mobile to become a major mobile carrier in the US." That's a stated plan, not a finished network.
The numbers behind 80,000
The scale is the story. Here's how 80,000 sites compares with what exists today, using the tower counts Reuters cited from the Wireless Infrastructure Association and the companies.
| Comparison | Sites | SpaceX's 80,000 as a share |
|---|---|---|
| All purpose-built US cell towers (2025) | 158,500 | about 50% |
| Crown Castle, American Tower and Vertical Bridge combined (US) | about 100,000 | about 80% |
| American Tower (US) | about 42,000 | almost 2x |
| Crown Castle (US) | about 40,000 | 2x |
| Vertical Bridge (US, private) | about 18,000 | about 4.4x |
The table makes one thing clear: no single tower company owns 80,000 US sites. Even if SpaceX signed for every Crown Castle tower, it would be only halfway to its target. Getting there means deals with at least two of the big owners, and likely all three. That fits Hillabrant's "all parties" answer, and it's why tower stocks rose together on Friday.
Cost is the other number. TD Cowen estimates a nationwide ground network would cost more than $80 billion and take many years, Reuters reported. That's a lot of money, but it's about 4% of SpaceX's roughly $1.97 trillion market value at Thursday's close. Spread over many years, it's a bill SpaceX can pay.
How the market reacted
Carrier stocks fell in after-hours trading Thursday and kept falling before Friday's open. MarketWatch reported these premarket prices on Friday morning, before the US market opened. I applied each move to the company's Thursday closing market value from the 24/7 Wall St table on Yahoo Finance to get a rough dollar swing.
| Stock | Thu close | Fri premarket | Move | Rough value change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Verizon | $45.20 | $43.25 | −4.3% | about −$8.1B |
| T-Mobile | $158.79 | $150.82 | −5.0% | about −$8.5B |
| AT&T | $22.74 | $21.76 | −4.3% | about −$6.6B |
| Crown Castle | $78.83 | $88.56 | +12.3% | about +$4.1B |
Put together, the three carriers lost roughly $23 billion of value on paper before the opening bell, about five times what Crown Castle gained. Those are premarket figures and they can change during the day. Reuters also reported American Tower up 7.3% and SpaceX up 2.1% before the open, and MarketWatch said T-Mobile's majority owner Deutsche Telekom fell 3.1% in Europe.
Not everyone thinks a deal is close. Truist analyst Matthew Niknam said the talks fall "far short from actual MLA's (master lease agreements) being signed," and that some may see them as a negotiating tactic, Investing.com reported. He still called the news "another firm positive for the Towers."
What's done, and what's still only a plan
| Piece | Status |
|---|---|
| 800 MHz low-band spectrum from Grain Management | Signed, not closed. Definitive agreement announced Oct. 8, subject to FCC approval. |
| 15,000 direct-to-phone satellites | FCC-approved, not built. Approval came on Tuesday, Oct. 6 (our earlier story). |
| 80,000 tower sites | Talks only. No lease signed, per unnamed sources. |
| Nationwide ground network | Pledge. Musk's earnings-call goal, with no public date. |
The 800 MHz deal is the piece that made towers matter. Low-band airwaves travel far and get through walls, which answers the main complaint about satellite phone service. In SpaceX's FCC application, the company describes up to 14 MHz of paired 800 MHz spectrum and a "flexible, hybrid architecture" that can deliver "terrestrial broadband, satellite service, or both." Musk called it the last critical piece of the spectrum puzzle.
This is the last critical piece of the spectrum puzzle needed for SpaceX to provide complete phone coverage in America
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 8, 2026
Those airwaves have changed hands fast. T-Mobile sold the same 800 MHz portfolio to Grain in August for $2.9 billion in cash plus Grain's 600 MHz licenses, MarketWatch reported. SpaceX is paying about $8 billion in cash, according to the Wall Street Journal's sources. Neither company has confirmed that price. If it's right, SpaceX is paying almost three times the cash T-Mobile got two months ago, though T-Mobile's deal also included spectrum in trade.
My read
Spectrum without towers is just a license, and towers without spectrum are just steel. SpaceX now has a signed deal for the airwaves and is shopping for the steel, at a scale that only makes sense for a full carrier. The weak spot is that the tower piece is still unnamed sources and a CEO saying he's talking to everyone. The first signed master lease agreement with Crown Castle or American Tower is the thing to watch. That would turn "fourth carrier" from a goal into a build. For a sense of how big the satellite side already is, our Starlink tracker is following more than 11,000 satellites in orbit right now.
Sources: Bloomberg (Kelcee Griffis), Oct. 22, 2026, via Yahoo Finance; Reuters, Oct. 22, 2026; MarketWatch, Oct. 23, 2026; MarketWatch (Europe telecoms); Reuters premarket, Oct. 23, 2026; Investing.com, Oct. 23, 2026; 24/7 Wall St via Yahoo Finance; Grain Management, Oct. 8, 2026; SpaceX FCC application narrative; MarketWatch, Oct. 8, 2026; Wall Street Journal; Elon Musk on X; Sawyer Merritt on X. Share-of-towers figures and dollar value changes are Supercharged Daily calculations.
— Alex R
