But overall there is no benefit from this. Its free cash flow for 2025 was negative $9.1 billion. According to its prospectus, it still sees an “addressable market” of $28.5 trillion. If you want to hear about SpaceX’s future money-making plans in the words of CEO Elon Musk, listen to this. The plan involves an AI that learns from ancient aliens, and in this blogger’s opinion, it’s vague.
But right now, you can sign up for SpaceX as a mobile phone provider. T-Mobile’s T-Satellite with Starlink uses SpaceX satellites to fill coverage gaps.
Last year, in a move that came as a surprise to most people (including me, to be honest), SpaceX paid $17 billion to Dish Network’s parent company, EchoStar, to acquire a large chunk of wireless spectrum. Frequency is a highly regulated, limited resource. It’s somewhat like buying real estate as permission to use certain wavelengths.
But plans for SpaceX to become a consumer-focused mobile phone provider are taking shape. As Bloomberg reported, SpaceX is in talks with Internet service provider Spectrum owner Charter Communications. Many, many cables across the spectrum are used in part to route data to mobile phones, which are more dependent on cables than you might imagine.
According to Bloomberg, “If a deal is finalized, it would help SpaceX on its desired path toward becoming a direct-to-consumer mobile phone provider.” That’s why it bought frequencies from EchoStar.
And since SpaceX already provides coverage-gap filling service to T-Mobile, you can certainly see the case that SpaceX’s own provider would be better than many others at providing coverage in inaccessible areas. There are other spectrum gaps that will need to be filled to be competitive, but the SpaceX mobile network looks increasingly plausible in the future.
This doesn’t exactly explain the $28.5 trillion thing, but it’s nothing.
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