The SpaceX $17 billion spectrum buy finally makes sense

SpaceX spent close to two years and nearly $20 billion buying wireless spectrum licenses that had nothing to do with rockets or satellite broadband.

Analysts struggled to explain why a space company needed land-based mobile spectrum at all. That question now has an answer, and it puts the country's three largest wireless carriers on notice.

The spending started last September, when SpaceX bought AWS-4 and H-block spectrum licenses from EchoStar for about $17 billion, according to a Reuters report.

The companies revised the deal two months later, adding roughly $2.6 billion for AWS-3 spectrum. The Federal Communications Commission cleared the transaction, handing SpaceX exactly the kind of terrestrial spectrum a standalone mobile network would require.

Related: SoftBank's founder picks side in space data center fight

TheNextWeb noted that spectrum on that scale is not the type of asset a company buys to remain a wholesale supplier to other carriers.

That detail matters because SpaceX's existing wireless business runs on a different model entirely.

Starlink currently connects to phones through a partnership with T-Mobile, filling coverage gaps in rural areas where cell towers

Fuente original: Yahoo Finance (https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/articles/spacex-17-billion-spectrum-buy-120300735.html)