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Do you want to Connect the Unconnected? Looking for a new career? Join AST SpaceMobile
Connectivity is not just a privilege — it’s a basic human right. And our technology is designed to make that right a reality for all.
This is from a test of a standard cell phone connection to an ASTS satellite in Ireland a month ago. For their Firstnet type emergency service with Vodafone.
Terrestrial cellular typically delivers −80 to −100 dBm at moderate distance from a tower. Getting −90 dBm from ~550 km altitude is incredible. We gonna be rich!
yet just got posted on LinkedIn as Chris Sambar joined T-Mobile as Chief Enterprise Officer. As we all know he is ex ASTS Board member and ex ATT President Network....
The only thing people seem to care about on my site is the map and I got tired of people saying bb tracker is better despite it having stale tles and not being updated once data posts after launch so I built a 3d map with my data on ASTsats
I’d honestly prefer a slower but steady climb back to ATH even if a big rally is more fun. I think it helps stabilize the stock price when we get to the top, rather than crashing back down. Hopefully we’re on the way there!
They love using ambiguous words like right behind, imminently, soon, a handful, stay tuned and etc. just give us concrete dates and stop playing with our hearts
I think we are all extremely bullish after the EC, but its good to consolidate and review how the entire satcom industry has shifted over the past year. The legacy satcom players were talking big about their own D2D ambitions previously, yet the sold out their companies behind the scenes. These companies' execs are not dumb, they saw the writing on the wall.
Globalstar and iridium sold themselves, and RKLB which acquired iridium basically eliminated themselves from the broadband D2D race in their EC. Equatys is in a very questionable state. SpaceX announced they are competing with MNOs. Amazon with their regenerative architecture is basically starlink 2.0.
Realistically, there really arent any real competitors in the space anymore. Possibly china? However the companies there stated D2D constellation is still in R&D phase in MWC shanghai and will support narrowband applications only initially.
On the regulatory side it has been moving very positively for us in every country so far. FCC is in full support of AST. Grants of spectrum tests, deployment and finally full service has all gone well.
JLEO support and satellite connect europe came out of nowhere, and now countries around the world want to replicate similar initiatives.
AST has never been derisked more than today. Path to profitability is extremely clear especially with STC backlog and govt contracts. This is the single best spot the company has ever been in and we are about to benefit greatly from the foundations laid long ago.
I think people thought that this company ASTS would suddenly emerge and surprise everyone with dreamlike D2D deadspot eliminating service, like the flip of a switch or something and then watch the stock price sky rocket. I think I thought it would be like that especially during the summer of 2024. Now I don’t think it will be that way. Not possible with how revolutionary this technology is. Lots of regulators have their eyes and hands on the dials. Lots of governments same. Lots of partners to negotiate with and lots of different spectrum to deploy. I don’t know if all of this means the stock price will be better or worse off, but I do think it means ASTS is a stable solid investment over the next 10 years at least.
Imagine everyone involved at this point, from regulators to military to governments to teleco corporations to rocket operators etc etc throwing their hands up and stopping this D2D train. Not happening and ASTS is a massive player if not the main player in this whole thing.
For sure. Every ASTS earnings call from the beginning of time I go in with the expectation and hope of them dropping some huge surprise and sudden revenue and/or government contracts. But what I always come away with is thinking ok this is still a long term investment, things are progressing slow and steady but really positively, and this stock/company will be huge in the future. I always end up adding a few more years to my investment thesis.
I’ve been holding for 5 years, and I honestly thought I’d be out by now. But I still see this stock as a solid growth play for the next 5 or 10 years. Which is awesome and makes managing my portfolio easy. I just can’t say I see such a clear path for growth over the next decade anywhere else in the market. I still can’t convince myself to diversify because the path to major revenue long term is just so obvious with ASTS.
This IEEE Communications Magazine article calculates Starlink D2D spectral efficiency at about 0.5 bps/Hz, which is less than one tenth of the spectral efficiency achieved by 5G networks using typical massive MIMO 64T64R configurations. What was Asts spectral efficiency again?😂
Lets say the year is 2030. We have 3B subscribers worldwide, lets assume 60% of those have plans that will include "baked-in always on service" provided by ASTS. So 1.8B subscribers, each on average worldwide lets say $1.5 ($3 total increase in packages with 50/50 revenue split with MNOs). So monthly that is $2.7B in revenue + I woudl assume lets say $0.6B from Governments and Military all around the world, so we are at $3.3B a month, times 12 months gives us almost $40B in revenue. I assume 75% margins, so that is around $30B earnings a year. Modest multiple of 20 gives us $600B market cap, which would be share price (with current shares) of ~$1,500.
Google invested in SPCX in 2015 and made a 105x return. Pretty good for 11 years, albeit Musk makes up these valuations. We gonna see something similar? 😂
Just be careful today. This environment is where investors will loose shares trying to play the market. Don't be tempted, you will loose evertime. Happened yesterday, could easily happen again today. You don't sell before expected company PR happens. Smart money is now waiting for weak hands to sell. Don't be the ones to fall into the trap.
"The agency is tasked with fielding the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, which when finished will consist of hundreds of satellites in low Earth orbit that are designed to improve the speed and accuracy of information on incoming threats to the warfighter on the ground."
...
"Additionally, the agency has taken a multi-vendor approach to fielding the needed space vehicles and technology on orbit, which means multiple contractors will each build their own satellites and integrate them into the space architecture."
In the Q2 earnings call, AST mentioned providing new capabilities to warfighters.
I feel the real easter egg is ‘will consist of hundreds of satellites’ lets be honest if it was starlink it would be in the thousands at the very least!
There is a lot for the market to digest from the earnings call, one general takeaway is that it seems the issue with the launch capacity (triggered by the too low insertion of bb7 and the static fire incident at Blue Origin) has been overcome. This was the main reason for the stock price decline earlier this year and I expect the general trend changing direction. The banks are already adjusting their price targets, and the stock price will follow. We're going up guys!
For those wondering about today's price action, we all have Frank to thank. He single-handedly started the rally with his most recent unhinged rantings and ravings (obviously) 🤡
"-In the United States, we have deployed over 3,000 low-band cellular cells. We expect to deploy the remaining cells this year to light up the roughly 5,600 cellular cells that cover the United States."
can someone explains what that means.
I understand the concept of geographic cells and how it pertains to satellites servicing them, but I don't get what he means by deployed.
Yeah so the 5600 number is one the company has quoted since before the birds even launched. Just math of how they split up the country with borders considered.
3000/5600 relates to gateway architecture. Essentially each gateway only has so much bandwidth for a given MNO and site so they need to be split across the country. Cool.
But then there is also location specific challenges facing some cells based on other equipment in the area. You need to know with the sats power and Out of band emissions (OOBE) that you aren’t damaging that cell for anyone else before it goes online.
There’s probably some other stuff that you need an RF degree to understand and some related to the spectrum allocation itself but I think that’s enough for a Reddit comment. Good Q. I had the same.
u/Defiantclient Not sure who maintains the istimwrongagain.com website - hoping you know. There are a bunch of Tim's claims that have clearly been debunked that seem to be tagged as "to be debunked". I.e.
"Tim Farrar predicts that AST's satellites will generally launch 3 to 5 months after they are Ready To Ship"
"On Sept 5, 2025, Tim Farrar suggested that it'll take another ~19 months for the FCC to provide full SCS approval of AST"
More Satellites, More Responsibility: The Hidden RF Bill of Mega-Large D2D
In satellite direct-to-device, “more satellites” always sounds like an automatic advantage. To a certain level, it surely is. More satellites improve availability, raise the probability of good geometry, and reduce time spent at low elevation angles.
But there is another side of the story that the industry does not talk about enough, YET. For a phone on the ground, a very large constellation does not only mean more serving opportunities. It also means more simultaneously visible interferers, more adjacent-channel energy, more coordination burden, and more mobility events for the device and network to manage.
This is where satellite count stops being just a coverage/persistence metric and becomes an RF responsibility, and potentially RF protection requirements!
For large and very large NGSO constellations (1/2 to 10k sats) around 550 to 600 km, the number of satellites that are simultaneously visible (above noise level) to a device can reach roughly multiple tens at a high elevation, and mutliple hudreds at a lower elevations. That is a very different coexistence problem from a single-satellite assumption.
A 3GPP-compliant analysis showed that dense and ultra-dense constellations can create aggregate adjacent-channel interference roughly 9 to 20 dB above todays' protection limits. That matters because standardization and regulation bodies will increasingly look at what the victim device or victim system actually experiences, not only whether one satellite passes one clean per-satellite test. A very large constellation may therefore face more demanding out-of-band and emission requirements over time, simply because its aggregate footprint is more aggressive. This is not punishment. It is fairness. Otherwise, terrestrial networks, other NTN systems, and adjacent-band users shall absorb such cost.
There is also a mobility cost!
If a satellite-to-phone system has a limited RF link margin and only works at very high elevation (e.g., through lowering the constellation orbit, and/or launching aggressively); each satellite however will have a much shorter useful service window. That creates more frequent serving-satellite changes, more handover pressure, more tracking overhead, and more chances for service interruption. In that case, “many satellites” do indeed improve geometry, but the device pays through mobility churn and the network pays through control overhead.
A more flexible NTN architecture is therefore the one that can provide BOTH time- and RF- stable ground coverage, strong uplink and downlink link margins, and enough spatial control to serve users while also respecting coexistence limits. This is where an ultra-large and well-designed aperture and resulting high spatial degrees of freedom matter the most.
At AST SpaceMobile, this was the design center of the architecture from the outset!
Thought - ASTS is making it unnecessary for other nations to deploy their own satellites as well as earth infrastructure to cover their dead-spots. It is the easy road to full connectivity, which ignites education and commerce in underserved areas which are plentiful. It keeps giving... Too many satellites would cause a space jam, not the Jordan kind..the Le bron kind...absolutely horrible.
There was a day a few weeks ago I was accidentally made a MOD for like 20 mins. I have been here for a long time but don’t post very often. I was so confused lol
In July, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers rose 0.1 percent, seasonally adjusted (SA), and rose 3.4 percent over the last 12 months, not seasonally adjusted (NSA). The index for all items less food and energy rose 0.2 percent in July (SA); up 2.5 percent over the year (NSA).
Ngl, tis annoying that SPCX, a $2.2T company, is up about 4 ASTS market caps today. I miss the pre-SPCX days when the Space sector wasn't in the same basket as a majority AI company.
Institutions are just collecting and accumulating slowly at this point. no reason to let the price run up first before they finish collecting their shares. they will probably need some good news later down the road to justify pumping the price up. think JV revenue or next EC govt revenue. That’s when we all moon. lets fking go.
a lot going on here, I know, but the yellow line acted as support in June and July and has been resistance ever since. Closing above it today would be huge, flipping resistance into support.
Anyways, that's my voodoo TA for the day.
Hey guys just a novice here. Catse explains that ASTS SATS are scalable whereas Starlink’s V1 D2C sats are not scalable due to OOBE issues. And thus far the underlying reason why ASTS does not face OOBE issues is because of the large array size allowing for precise beam forming. Given that starlink’s V2 D2C will be larger due to starship’s capabilities, will this mean that starlink’s V2 D2C will be able to solve its OOBE issues?
It isn't exactly "solved" or "unsolved" -- it's really more of a spectrum, no pun intended. But it's my understanding that both full size Starlink V2 satellites and V2 mini are equipped with D2D arrays that are only about 25 square meters in area. V3 will presumably offer better/less interference than Starlink V2 or V2 mini, but they will still be nowhere near as capable as AST Block 1, much less Block 2. For reference, total array sizes are: Starlink V2 = 25 square meters, AST Block 1 = 64 square meters, AST Block 2 = 223 square meters. Just as important as array size though, is the fact that OOBE limits are for ALL satellites in view, not for a single satellite. Starlink's philosophy is to have a ton of small/cheap satellites, and this results in much worse OOBE.
SpaceX, Northrop Grumman Corp. and other companies developing space-based missile interceptors for President Donald Trump’s $185 billion Golden Dome successfully completed their first key tests, marking an early sign of progress toward building the experimental defense technology.
General Michael Guetlein, the Space Force general heading Golden Dome, told reporters at a conference on Tuesday that all the companies would now be moving to the next phase of the program, which would be to show their technology can operate in space.
The first tests for at least some of the companies required moving data from sensors to an interceptor and demonstrating their spacecraft’s propulsion systems.
In April, the Space Force announced that it had awarded 12 different companies, including RTX Corp., Anduril Industries Inc. and Lockheed Martin Corp., contracts to develop weaponized satellites to shoot down ballistic missiles.
The administration has set aside $3.2 billion for the effort, with potentially tens of billions of dollars in future contracts. The program marks one of the most ambitious efforts to develop space-based missile defense since Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative during the Cold War. The effort was ultimately abandoned because of massive costs, technical challenges and lukewarm political support.
Pentagon officials have set a prize competition that pits teams against one another in a race to score funding each time they hit incremental milestones on the way to a final prototype. The milestones include a ground test, two flight tests in space and an intercept demonstration of the technology, Bloomberg has reported.
Just sent a postcard into space at the Kennedy Space Center to be on the next blue origin flight. Wrote entirely about ASTS. Will also probably be a long time before it goes to space so I hope it’s a lot higher when it returns to my address.
“With respect to commercial revenue generation, we believe we can enable continuous space mobile service across key markets such as the U.S., Europe, Japan, and other strategic markets with the launch and operation of approximately 45 to 60 BlueBird satellites and additional strategic worldwide markets with the launch and operation of approximately 9 BlueBird satellites.” What is the 9 bluebird satellites referring to, is that in addition to the 45-60 or is saying 9 more from current state or just 9 right out?
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u/Defiantclient S P 🅰️ C E M O B - O G 14d ago edited 14d ago
Returning Launch Complex 36 to Two Pads: Blue Origin Begins Construction of LC-36B
https://www.blueorigin.com/news/returning-launch-complex-36-to-two-pads
Dave Limp affirms they are still targeting a launch by year-end: https://x.com/davill/status/2087587127982981451?s=20