SpaceX is talking to cell tower companies about access to at least 80,000 sites across the United States, a step toward building a fourth nationwide wireless carrier, Bloomberg News reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter, according to Reuters.
One of the companies in the talks is Crown Castle, which runs about 40,000 towers in the U.S. Its chief executive, Christian Hillabrant, was asked on Wednesday about possible leases with SpaceX and Amazon. He said the company was talking to “all parties” and would not discuss specific customers.
Neither side has announced a deal. Crown Castle, American Tower, Vertical Bridge and SpaceX did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters.
The scale is the point. Eighty thousand sites would be half the 158,500 purpose-built cell towers working in the U.S. last year, according to the Wireless Infrastructure Association. American Tower has about 42,000 sites in the U.S., and Vertical Bridge owns around 18,000.
TD Cowen put the cost of a nationwide ground network at more than $80 billion. Building one would take many years, the firm estimated, with billions more in spending on top of that.
Investors reacted before any deal was signed. Shares of AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile fell between 4.2% and 5% in extended trading Thursday. The selling continued early Friday, with the three carriers down between 3% and 5%, while Crown Castle rose 7.7% in premarket trading and American Tower and SBA Communications also gained.
SpaceX is already buying nationwide low-band spectrum. On this week’s earnings call, Elon Musk said the company would build out its ground networks.
“We will be building out our terrestrial networks so there’s broad-based connectivity anywhere that SpaceX and Starlink are allowed to operate,”
No timetable for an agreement was reported.
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