TAMPA, Fla. — AST SpaceMobile said Nov. 14 it has booked rockets from Blue Origin and others to deploy enough satellites between 2025 and 2026 to provide full text, voice, and 5G data services to standard mobile phones across the United States and other key markets.
The company said it has contracts to launch up to 45 Block 2 BlueBird satellites, with options for around 15 more, to get to the level needed to enable U.S. anchor customers AT&T and Verizon to keep subscribers connected outside cell tower coverage nationwide.
Founder Abel Avellan, AST SpaceMobile’s CEO and chair, said during an earnings call with analysts that India’s GSLV is first up and will launch a single Block 2 BlueBird.
He said two SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets carrying four Block 2 BlueBirds each would probably come next, followed by successive Blue Origin New Glenn rockets, which have a fairing big enough to deploy eight of the satellites at a time to low Earth orbit (LEO).
Although New Glenn is slated to conduct its maiden flight this year following multiple delays, Avellan said he is confident the rocket will be available to deploy the bulk of its upcoming satellites as AST SpaceMobile ramps up their production in Texas.
“The New Glenn is designed to be reused 25 times and there are multiple of them being built,” he said on the earnings call.
Blue Origin declined to comment on its launch manifest.
A Block 2 BlueBird would be about 223 square meters when fully deployed, significantly larger than each of the five 64-square-meter Block 1 BlueBirds that launched together in September on a Falcon 9.
Avellan said Block 2 BlueBirds set to launch from around the middle of 2025 would also include chips developed in-house to enable 10 gigahertz of processing bandwidth per satellite — 10 times the capacity of a Block 1 BlueBird, supporting up to 120 megabits per second (Mbps) peak data rates.
The five Block 1 satellites are the same size as AST SpaceMobile’s two-year-old BlueWalker 3 prototype in LEO, which the venture said has achieved more than 21 Mbps download speeds during tests.
AST SpaceMobile has filed a “Special Temporary Authority” (STA) request with the Federal Communications Commission for permission to begin Block 1 beta services with AT&T and Verizon, after the regulator granted a partial license in August.
The operator also still needs to get permission to commercially provide its services in the United States, along with other direct-to-smartphone competitors, including SpaceX.
Avellan said 45-60 satellites would also be enough to deliver continuous space-based cellular broadband service in Europe and Japan, where the company also has early agreements with local telcos.
Funding the expansion
Andrew Johnson, AST SpaceMobile’s chief financial officer, said on the earnings call that the operator now expects to spend between $19 million and $21 million to build and deploy each Block 2 BlueBird.
This is an increase from an earlier $16 million to $18 million estimate “as a result of actual launch costs recently contracted,” he added.
AST SpaceMobile recorded $519 million in cash at the end of September, up from $288 million at the end of the previous quarter, after taking advantage of a stock price that soared following details of its U.S. telco partnerships.
The company has also submitted an application with the Export-Import Bank of the United States for debt financing.
“If this application is successful, we can use the proceeds to source cost-effective, long-term debt funding of large projects,” Johnson said.
He said capital expenditures are set to sharply increase as satellite production ramps up and launch contract payments are due, jumping from $27 million for the three months to Sept. 30 to around $100 million for the fourth quarter of 2024.
However, the company expects to be able to secure additional sources of funding after deploying 25 Block 2 BlueBirds, including potentially generating free cash flows to fund the remaining constellation.