传SpaceX拟百亿美元收购Globalstar

03.24.26 Jay Monroe finally wins his bet on Globalstar… After more than 20 years, it looks like Jay Monroe has finally achieved his goal of selling Globalstar at a profit. In the coming days, I understand that the sale process initiated back in October will reach its conclusion, and Globalstar will be sold at something close to Jay’s asking price of $10B. And as I promised Jay in Paris last September, I’ll owe him an apology for ever doubting that he would be able to make money on his Globalstar investment. Rumors have been swirling all week here at the satellite conference in Washington DC and many people have guessed that the winning bidder would be Amazon. That seemed to be the most likely outcome back in January. However, I think that Jay took Amazon’s offer to SpaceX and they probably decided to beat it, in order to further cement Starlink’s dominance of the satellite industry. Amazon already faces severe competitive pressure from Starlink in the broadband market, and a Starlink purchase of Globalstar would block another opportunity for Amazon to broaden its appeal and match Starlink’s D2D offer. Buying yet more spectrum might not be seen as the wisest course of action for SpaceX, if some international regulators decide that because Starlink controls Globalstar’s MSS spectrum there is no need to grant Starlink additional rights in the 2GHz MSS spectrum acquired from EchoStar. But Brendan Carr’s threats that he will block European satellite operators from the US market if the EU withdraws Starlink’s spectrum rights should carry the day in the near term. In particular, a two year extension is likely to be granted for the current EU 2GHz spectrum licenses (which is conveniently beyond the November 2028 presidential election). And 2029 is a long way away, given the number of balls Elon Musk has to juggle in the next few years to get Starship flying, meet NASA’s moon ambitions and sort out the challenges at xAI and Tesla. What is much less clear, is what will happen to Globalstar’s C-3 constellation and the relationship with Apple after a sale. Would Apple continue to pay Starlink hundreds of millions of dollars per year to support connectivity on existing iPhones? Would the C-3 constellation still be completed, especially if it takes MDA another two years or more, by which time Starlink might have its own next generation Starlink Mobile constellation on orbit? That decision could go either way, depending on how confident SpaceX is that Starship will be re…