AT&T CEO John Stankey says fiber optics is unbeatable and dismisses the idea that Starlink can compete in mobile telephony. Analysts recall a similar story: BlackBerry and the iPhone.
In an interview with Axios, AT&T CEO John Stankey tried to cool expectations about Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service, as a future mobile phone operator. According to Stankey, fiber optics and traditional cell towers remain superior. “Nothing beats fiber,” he stated, while also defending his company’s $3 billion deal with Corning.
Elon Musk’s plan is different: instead of building expensive towers and cabling, he proposes adding small cell base stations to the satellite antennas that Starlink customers already have. That way, the satellite network could offer direct connectivity to mobile phones, with bandwidth that, according to Musk, could surpass that of current operators.
Stankey rejected the idea on economic, legal, and technical grounds. He said it would cost as much as building a telephone network from scratch and that you cannot radiate cell signals from someone’s home without their permission. “It won’t work effectively,” he said. If it were viable, he added, AT&T would have already tried it with its vast fiber network.
The comparison with the past is inevitable. In 2007, when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, BlackBerry dominated the smartphone market. Its co-CEO, Jim Balsillie, responded with a phrase that became famous: “It’s okay, we’ll be fine.” Shortly after, BlackBerry lost its leadership to Apple and other competitors.
Critics point out that Stankey could be falling into the “not invented here” syndrome and the sunk cost fallacy: defending his own technology even when a more efficient alternative appears. SpaceX, by contrast, seems not to cling to its past successes. The company already has more than 10,000 Starlink satellites in orbit, serves millions of customers in over 160 countries, and is moving forward with the development of its Starship rocket.
By: Nestor Castillo, ForAllTechNews Director