Telecommunications stocks sold off Friday after Elon Musk’s comments space x Announced an agreement to purchase a nationwide spectrum portfolio with the aim of expanding Starlink internet into mobile services.
verizon The stock price fell about 10% on the news, its worst pace since 2002. T-Mobile Although it decreased by 13%, AT&T fell about 10%, marking their worst days since 2013 and 2000, respectively.
SpaceX stock rose just about 1% on the day.
The deal includes acquiring spectrum from Grain Management, which SpaceX described in a statement Thursday as a “licensed portfolio of up to 14 megahertz of paired spectrum in the 800MHz band.”
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, whose representative will oversee approval of the deal, said in an interview on CNBC that competition in the spectrum market is “really good news for American consumers.”
“We’re bringing probably more than $100 billion of spectrum to the market over the next two years, so we expect a lot of competition,” Kerr said Friday on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Streets.”
“There’s going to be movement in the market. People are going to try to compete and innovate and I think that’s great. We’ll see how this goes. Ultimately we’re not going to decide the winners and losers,” he added.
Multiple SpaceX analysts praised the new spectrum deal, with Evercore ISI writing that the rocket maker “now has a real network overview” on top of its existing satellite capabilities. JPMorgan wrote that the acquisition “makes Starlink Mobile’s long-term opportunity even more credible.”
“That said, we continue to view near-term risks to U.S. wireless carriers as limited given the time, infrastructure and capital required to build competitive terrestrial networks,” the analysts added in a note Friday.
