There is a lot of noise around Direct-to-Device (D2D) satellite connectivity right now. SpaceX, Amazon, AST SpaceMobile, Apple, T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, and others are all moving pieces around the board. Some of the discussion is technical. Some of it is financial. But most of it comes back to the same basic question:
How big is the D2D market, really?
I keep hearing wildly different answers from people who should know. SpaceX’s S-1 points to a $28.5 trillion TAM, although most of that is AI. The global satellite mobile-connectivity and D2D opportunity is roughly $740 billion globally. SpaceX has also framed the near-term prize as the roughly $600 billion in annual revenue generated by the Big Three U.S. carriers.
Meanwhile, T-Mobile’s Srini Gopalan has said satellite traffic represents just 0.0002% of his network. Some third-party estimates put the Direct-to-Device satellite connectivity market at nearly $12 billion by 2030. Others stay in the low single digits. Smart people are looking at the same industry and landing light-years apart.
I don’t think there’s one answer. If D2D is mostly emergency messaging and dead-zone coverage, it’s probably a useful but modest feature. If it becomes a broader layer of mobile coverage serving consumers, enterprises, rural markets, fleets, agriculture, energy, public safety, IoT, and more, the market starts to look much larger.
I want to cut through the noise and focus on one question, with one follow-up: What are the conditions that determine whether D2D becomes a big market or stays a small one? And what does this mean for operators?
I’m not going to argue about whether Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos can pull this off. Both have a habit of walking into established industries, getting dismissed by incumbents, and reshaping those industries anyway. The more useful question isn’t can they? It’s what has to be true for D2D to become a meaningful market, and how big could that market realistically get under different assumptions?
I’ll admit a bias here. Years ago, I helped launch one of the first inter-carrier platforms for network APIs. The technology worked, but the effort largely failed because operators couldn’t align on the commercial model.
The lesson stuck with me: when industry participants establish reasonable efforts to maintain some level of control, incumbents don’t just protect their share. They can inadvertently shrink the whole market. I think that same dynamic is hiding inside the D2D debate.
That is the paradox: the market may be large, but only if the structure allows it to become large.
Three Scenarios for the Direct-to-Device Satellite Connectivity Market
The reason smart people disagree about the Direct-to-Device (D2D) satellite connectivity market size is that they’re quietly describing different markets. I see three scenarios. They’re not forecasts so much as bookends for where the market could land.
I’m focusing on the U.S. because the numbers are easier to pin down, but the global opportunity would be a multiple of whatever the U.S. market turns out to be.
Scenario 1: A Coverage Feature
This is the version most people can picture today. Direct-to-device satellite connectivity extends mobile coverage to places where your phone previously had no signal. Maybe you can send texts from a rural highway, a national park, or a boat. Maybe you can reach help during an emergency.
In this model, the carrier still owns the customer. The satellite operator is a vendor partner helping fill in terrestrial coverage gaps. That is a useful and valuable service, but it’s still a feature inside the existing wireless bundle.
Here’s the math: The U.S. has roughly 350 million wireless subscribers. T-Mobile prices its satellite add-on at around $10 per month, but most people get it bundled into premium plans. It’s a feature, not a standalone product.
If the satellite operator’s wholesale cut is $1–2 per subscriber per month, and maybe half of U.S. subscribers end up on plans that include it, you land at around $2–4 billion a year. That’s real money, but it’s not a transformative business for companies spending $10–20 billion on spectrum and constellations.
The carrier joint venture announced by AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon points in this direction. It’s designed to pool resources, establish common technical standards, and make satellite coverage easier to add across carrier networks. That’s rational and shrewd. But it also reinforces the ceiling: in this model, the market is capped by what the carriers collectively decide D2D is worth to them.
That’s Scenario 1: real value, but a market measured in incremental ARPU and coverage insurance rather than a standalone business.
Scenario 2: D2D as a Real Coverage Layer
Now assume D2D satellite connectivity gets good enough to feel like a decent terrestrial carrier: voice, data, and video that actually work. Not everywhere and not for everyone, but reliably enough that a meaningful number of people choose it as their primary or preferred connection.
Who are those people? Americans in rural areas, including those in the roughly 20% of the U.S. land mass that the FCC says has limited or no reliable cellular coverage, as well as users in situations where mobility matters more than peak speed.
The math: Assume 30–50 million Americans, or roughly 10–15% of subscribers, decide D2D is genuinely better than their current option, compelling enough to switch, or the only option where they live. Apply an industry ARPU of $45–55 per month, and you get a U.S. consumer wireless market of roughly $16–33 billion a year.
And that’s only the floor. Add IoT, asset tracking, connected fleets, maritime and aviation, public safety, mining, agriculture, and energy, and the number climbs quickly once coverage is truly ubiquitous. The $10 billion-plus forecasts for the D2D satellite connectivity market from third-party analysts live in this zone. They’re possible, but they’re not automatic.
For this scenario to materialize, service quality has to be closer to a terrestrial phone than an emergency beacon. That’s partly a satellite-technology question. But more fundamentally, it’s a spectrum question, which we’ll get to shortly.
Scenario 3: A Platform for Things We Haven’t Imagined
This is the Musk and Bezos version of D2D satellite connectivity: not simply filling coverage gaps, but building a connectivity layer that enables entirely new categories of service.
Think autonomous vehicles that need a constant data link across every mile of highway. Robotics and AI systems operating where no fixed infrastructure exists. Machine-to-machine communication at a scale that doesn’t map neatly to today’s wireless models.
I’m not putting a dollar figure on this one because it’s inherently speculative. But when SpaceX talks about a nearly $700 billion TAM, and Amazon spends $11.6 billion to acquire Globalstar before filing for 5,105 dedicated D2D satellites, neither is building for Scenario 1. They’re building for a world where satellite connectivity is a core infrastructure layer.
Whether you find that visionary or fanciful, I’ll leave that to you. What I can say is that two of the most successful infrastructure builders of the last 25 years are making very large, very deliberate bets that this is the direction of travel.
What Has to Be True for D2D Satellite Connectivity to Scale: Spectrum and Customer Access
If Scenario 2 or Scenario 3 is going to happen, two structural conditions have to be in place for D2D satellite connectivity to scale. They’re closely related, and both ultimately come back to spectrum though it might not be obvious at first.
Strip away the technical details that tend to dominate the D2D conversation, and the issue comes down to these two questions: Is there enough spectrum? And who controls the customer?
Both will help determine whether D2D remains primarily a coverage feature or develops into a much larger connectivity market.
Condition 1: Dedicated Satellite Spectrum for D2D Has to Grow
The technical debate can get complicated quickly, but the important distinction is actually pretty simple.
SCS is powerful because it works with normal phones, but coordination can be a headache
Supplemental Coverage from Space (SCS) allows a satellite operator to use a mobile carrier’s existing terrestrial spectrum from orbit, enabling D2D satellite connectivity on compatible smartphones without dedicated satellite spectrum. That means it can reach ordinary 4G and 5G phones, with no special handset required. That’s a huge advantage for adoption.
The tradeoff is that the satellite provider remains tied to the carrier’s spectrum, network plans, priorities, and customer relationship. The spectrum is borrowed, and it can only be used where the carrier’s terrestrial network isn’t already using it.
That’s manageable in true dead zones. It becomes much harder in transition areas, where satellite beams overlap with busy ground networks.
MSS offers more control, but requires more building
Mobile Satellite Service (MSS) spectrum was set aside specifically for satellite operations. Because it’s effectively dedicated to space-based use, a satellite operator can have greater control over D2D service deployment without having to negotiate around a terrestrial carrier’s network.
The tradeoff is that today’s phone chipsets generally don’t support MSS frequencies yet. That’s roughly two to three years away for broadband D2D at scale.
Here’s the point: the distinction that matters isn’t really the regulatory label. It’s whether the spectrum is dedicated or shared for D2D satellite connectivity.
Dedicated spectrum can be deployed without taking spectrum away from terrestrial operations, without the same interference disputes, and without a terrestrial carrier holding a veto over how it’s used. Shared spectrum requires those negotiations, often repeatedly.
Dedicated spectrum also addresses a common question: if satellite needs a terrestrial component to deliver a truly mobile experience, how do you add one without recreating the coordination problem we have with SCS?
MSS licensees have long had the ability to build terrestrial cells on their own satellite frequencies, filling coverage gaps with a ground layer they control. One operator can coordinate the satellite and ground components within its own network instead of negotiating around someone else’s dense terrestrial system.
The new technical standards for MSS will also address that space-versus-terrestrial coordination directly, allowing devices to self-select the best available signal. That is likely the regulatory basis for SpaceX’s terrestrial small-cell plan, and it’s a structural advantage that SCS cannot easily match.
Follow the money and the pattern is hard to miss. SpaceX put roughly $20 billion into EchoStar’s spectrum, about 65 MHz nationwide, anchored by EchoStar’s 2 GHz MSS holdings. Amazon put $11.6 billion into Globalstar’s. The FCC’s April 2026 order reinforced those exclusive MSS rights. Ligado leased roughly 40 MHz of its L-Band to AST SpaceMobile for the U.S. and Canada.
The market is clearly assigning a premium to spectrum that can support satellite operations at scale.
That said, the SCS model, hybrid frameworks, and future sharing mechanisms all still have important roles to play and will likely coexist with MSS models for the foreseeable future. Companies pursuing those approaches aren’t on the wrong side of history. They’re simply solving the same problem from a different starting point.
The ultimate bottleneck is the supply of dedicated spectrum.
SpaceX is working with roughly 65 MHz of newly acquired spectrum, while major terrestrial carriers hold on the order of 300 MHz each. Spectrum doesn’t grow on trees. It has to be identified, freed up, harmonized internationally, and built into mainstream devices.
The regulatory machine is moving, but none of this is guaranteed.
Condition 2: D2D Needs a Competitive Path to the Customer
In Scenario 1, carriers own the customer by definition. D2D is their feature, running on their spectrum and sold through their plans. That works for a coverage add-on, but it also puts a ceiling on the market. D2D is ultimately worth only as much as the carriers decide it’s worth.
I’ve seen this movie before. The technology can be ready. The opportunity can be real. And the market can still fail to develop if every new business model has to pass through incumbent gatekeepers.
For Scenarios 2 and 3, D2D satellite providers need some path to the customer that isn’t entirely mediated by the incumbent carriers. That doesn’t necessarily mean building a full-blown competing wireless service, although SpaceX clearly has that ambition. But there needs to be enough independent access for the market to reach its full potential rather than being limited to what a single distribution channel is willing to tolerate.
The carriers play an essential role in every scenario. But infrastructure markets tend to create the most value when there are multiple paths to market and enough competition that innovation isn’t bottlenecked by a single gatekeeper.
Even the carrier JV points in that direction. The carriers themselves described the need for “multiple constellations to buy from” and a “robust wholesale structure” so that no single provider can dictate pricing. That’s the clue. Even Scenario 1 only works if more than one satellite platform is viable.
Put simply, dedicated spectrum is what makes independent business models possible. If you have your own spectrum, you can build your own customer relationships or partner with carriers in genuinely new ways.
If you’re running on borrowed spectrum, you’re a vendor, not a platform.
Spectrum determines what’s possible. Competitive structure determines whether we ever find out.
The Real D2D Paradox: Satellite Connectivity Might Make Terrestrial Networks More Valuable
Most of the coverage of D2D frames it as a fight: satellite versus terrestrial, with a new network coming to eat the old one. I’d push back on that framing, because communications markets have almost never worked that way.
Fiber didn’t kill wireless. Wireless didn’t kill wireline broadband. Cellular became valuable when coverage, smartphones, and apps came together to create uses nobody had budgeted for. Broadband followed a similar path. It started as a way to load web pages faster and became the foundation for Netflix, Zoom, and the cloud. Each new layer expanded the market rather than simply dividing up a fixed one.
So the more interesting question isn’t whether satellite will substitute for terrestrial cellular service. It’s whether ubiquitous satellite coverage could actually make terrestrial cellular networks more valuable by eliminating the coverage gaps that have quietly limited adoption and usage of new services for decades.
Nobody wants to build fiber along every remote route or put a tower behind every hill. If satellite can fill those gaps, customers stop worrying about where their service works and start using more of everything.
That’s not a smaller pie split more ways. It’s a bigger pie.
What D2D Satellite Connectivity Means for Rural Operators
For rural telecom operators, the anxiety is real and immediate. But it’s worth being precise about where that anxiety comes from. Right now, the threat isn’t satellite cellular. It’s Starlink’s fixed broadband quietly pulling away the rural internet customers who have long been the backbone of local operators’ businesses. That’s a genuine competitive wound, and it’s happening today.
But the company taking your broadband customer today could become a valuable mobile partner tomorrow.
If D2D develops as a coverage layer rather than a full replacement for terrestrial networks, satellite platforms may need something they cannot manufacture: trusted local customer relationships in exactly the rural geographies where satellite mobility is most valuable.
A bundle that pairs local broadband with satellite-based mobile coverage could become a differentiated retention strategy that neither side can offer on its own.
The question rural operators need to work on now is which platforms are building toward partnership and which are building to route around rural operators entirely. SpaceX looks more like a go-it-alone player at the moment. Others may see more value in the partner model.
That uncertainty is exactly why rural operators should be at the table before the rules are written.
D2D is coming whether you participate or not. The choice isn’t whether it arrives. It’s whether you help shape the market or react to it after someone else has written the rules.
The Bottom Line: How Big Could the D2D Market Become?
Two years from now, the answer to “how big could the D2D satellite connectivity market become?” will probably look very different from what it does today. It won’t be $28.5 trillion. But it won’t be 0.0002% either.
My read is that Scenario 2 is the most likely outcome: a real new layer of the mobile ecosystem worth tens of billions of dollars globally. Getting there takes three things: dedicated spectrum, device-ecosystem support, and a competitive structure open enough to let D2D develop beyond what any single carrier decides it’s worth.
That last condition is the one I’d watch most closely, because it’s the one we’ve gotten wrong before. The building blocks for D2D are falling into place. The open question is whether the industry stays open enough to let the bigger market form.
There’s a lot of noise around Direct-to-Device satellite connectivity right now. If this framework for cutting through it was useful, I’d welcome your perspective, particularly from those of you watching the spectrum and competitive dynamics up close.