Ryan Goldstein

.@SpaceX just spent $19.6B on 65 MHz of spectrum and said it will build its mobile network with small cells on rooftops instead of towers, saying explicitly, “you deploy that as you need it.” Sound familiar? The most valuable private company in the world looked at the macro tower model and...passed. Their plan? Distributed radios on buildings, deployed incrementally, close to where people actually use data. It’s an endorsement of decentralized networks by the biggest challenger to traditional telco. Do satellites solve the universal connectivity problem? Not entirely on their own. Satellites are are good at covering things like oceans, highways, rural dead zones, and disaster areas. But what physics will not let them do is deliver capacity indoors, where most mobile data is actually consumed. Satellite signals do not pass through buildings, and 65 MHz stretched across a continent cannot carry a city at rush hour. Indoor connectivity has to be built from the ground up. Radio by radio, building by building, by people who are already there. It is the hardest part of wireless to replicate and the one part satellites fall short. So to @SpaceX @Starlink @Gwynne_Shotwell, welcome to decentralized wireless infrastructure! You handle the sky and when your customers walk inside, the @helium Network is already there for a smooth handoff 🤝. Source: fierce-network.com/wireless/…