{"id":805242,"date":"2026-03-05T08:25:47","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T08:25:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/805242\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T08:25:47","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T08:25:47","slug":"ast-spacemobile-has-big-cellular-satellite-plans-for-2026-can-it-deliver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/805242\/","title":{"rendered":"AST SpaceMobile Has Big Cellular Satellite Plans for 2026. Can It Deliver?"},"content":{"rendered":"

BARCELONA\u2014The company that AT&T<\/a> and Verizon<\/a> have been banking on for space-based broadband for their mobile subscribers says it will deliver by the end of 2026. But first, it will have to step up the pace of its satellite launches.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We plan to put up 45 to 60 total this year, and that’ll be able to give us commercial service in our initial markets,” Scott Wisniewski, AST president and chief strategy officer, said in an interview here at MWC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Midland, Texas, firm is only weeks away from its next liftoff, but the New Glenn rocket it’s using<\/a> for a launch from Cape Canaveral will only carry one of its massive BlueBird satellites<\/a>, even though Blue Origin’s heavy-lift vehicle<\/a> can loft from six to eight of those spacecraft.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wisniewski said the company is being conservative on New Glenn’s first flight with an AST payload.\u00a0“We have a lot of launches with Blue Origin,” he said. “This is the first one. It was important that we get all the integration right.”\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

But that won’t leave much time to reach 45 satellites in operation, the number AST has cited for its initial service plans. The company already has six BlueBirds in orbit, five smaller models launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9<\/a> from Florida in September 2024 and one of the current, larger models delivered by an LVM3 (Launch Vehicle Mark III)<\/a> from India in December.<\/p>\n

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That last satellite has since unfurled its 2,400-square-foot array of solar panels and antennas<\/a>\u00a0and is undergoing checkout testing. “So far, so good,” Wisniewski summarized, calling the array deployment “a real key moment for us.”<\/p>\n

After the upcoming New Glenn launch, AST’s next launch will also take place from the Space Coast<\/a>, but Wisniewski didn’t name the rocket or specify how many BlueBirds would be encapsulated under its payload fairing. “We haven’t announced the next one yet, but we plan to ship the next batch of satellites in April.”<\/p>\n

Those and future BlueBird launches will use a lighter, “stackable” design that allows from three to eight satellites to be packaged per launch; on a Falcon 9, the upper limit would be four<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“That’s what can support the configurations of three, four, six, or eight stacked satellites, which is how we scale the cost solution because you don’t want to be doing one-off launches,” Wisniewski said.<\/p>\n

A business update that AST released Monday<\/a> cited “additional launches expected every one to two months on average,” which would leave at most nine launches after March.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So, if it’s going to put another 38 BlueBirds in orbit, AST will have to write large checks to SpaceX\u2014the company it’s trying to catch up with in direct-to-phone service<\/a>\u2014and Blue Origin will need to step up New Glenn’s launch cadence. That launch vehicle, however, has flown only twice since\u00a0its January 2025 debut<\/a>\u00a0and has other customers with\u00a0urgent needs, which may make 2027 a more realistic timeframe<\/a> for AST.<\/p>\n

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Amazon has booked 12 New Glenn launches<\/a> for its Leo<\/a> broadband satellite constellation, and Blue Origin itself needs its own rocket to begin testing its Blue Moon series of lunar landers\u2014including versions designed to take astronauts back to the Moon for NASA’s Artemis Project<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, AST has stepped up satellite production toward a goal of building six a month.\u00a0“We’ve produced approximately 30 satellites’ worth of microns at this point,” Wisniewski said, referring to the two-sided module on a BlueBird that incorporates a solar panel on one side and antennas on the other, with associated circuitry in between.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One planned BlueBird upgrade, a proprietary ASIC that AST says will support peak downloads of 120Mbps per coverage cell, will enter that production line “around mid-year,” he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wisniewski forecast a completed constellation of 90 satellites sometime in 2027 and said AST’s vertically integrated manufacturing of them would make that possible.\u00a0“We think it’s impossible to build a constellation at this point by purchase order,” he said. “You really have to do it yourself, so the vertical integration is critical to our success.”<\/p>\n

Recommended by Our Editors<\/p>\n

Locking Down the Carrier Deals<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, wireless carriers continue to sign coverage deals with AST. Canada’s Telus announced one on\u00a0Wednesday<\/a>, a day after France’s Orange revealed its own partnerships<\/a> with AST and Satellite Connect Europe<\/a>\u2014a joint venture AST set up with Vodafone to enhance European digital sovereignty<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wisniewski described AST’s goal as being “a partner of choice for all network operators,” saying “our architecture and business model are very comfortable to them.”<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

\n (Credit: AST SpaceMobile)\n<\/p>\n

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has publicly toyed with the idea of using Starlink to\u00a0sell wireless service directly to customers<\/a>, but the company renounced the idea<\/a>\u00a0in an MWC keynote on Monday from President and COO Gwynne Shotwell and Starlink SVP Michael Nicholls.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Later that afternoon, SpaceX had its own new carrier partner: Deutsche Telekom announced<\/a> it would use Starlink’s future V2 service, tapping the globally licensed S-band spectrum it picked up from EchoStar last year<\/a>, to fill in white spots on its coverage map.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That Starlink upgrade, which Nicholls said would allow peak download speeds of 150Mbps, will require launches of a new constellation of much larger satellites<\/a> on SpaceX’s still-unproven Starship rocket<\/a>, which Nicholls said would begin in 2027. SpaceX also plans to use that giant, fully reusable vehicle to deploy a constellation of 1 million orbital data centers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Asked about this newfound buzz around space-based data centers<\/a>, Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently called them a realistic prospect in a decade<\/a>. Wisniewski suggested that this could be another area where AST gives SpaceX some competition. Or at least carve out a little business as a component supplier of solar arrays.<\/p>\n

“We think that we have a critical component of one of those solutions,” he said. “The ability to put a lot of power into space as cheaply as it’s ever been done before.”<\/p>\n

About Our Expert<\/p>\n

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Experience<\/p>\n

Rob Pegoraro writes about interesting problems and possibilities in computers, gadgets, apps, services, telecom, and other things that beep or blink. He\u2019s covered such developments as the evolution of the cell phone from 1G to 5G, the fall and rise of Apple, Google\u2019s growth from obscure Yahoo rival to verb status, and the transformation of social media from CompuServe forums to Facebook\u2019s billions of users. Pegoraro has met most of the founders of the internet and once received a single-word email reply from Steve Jobs.<\/p>\n


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