When the first five commercial BlueBird satellites rode a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral on 12 September 2024, they unfolded antenna arrays measuring sixty four square metres, the largest ever installed on a communications spacecraft. Those enormous panels were not built for broadcast television but to talk directly with ordinary smartphones, a concept that Venezuelan engineer Abel Avellan first outlined eight years ago and that is now moving from lab to orbit.
Momentum has accelerated in 2025. In May the firm disclosed that Verizon would inject one hundred million dollars, split between commercial prepayments and convertible notes, to guarantee United States coverage and speed factory expansion in Midland Texas. The deal follows earlier stakes from AT&T, Vodafone and Google and lifted the company’s valuation close to nine billion dollars.
During the same briefing chief financial officer Andrew Johnson issued the company’s first revenue forecast, projecting between fifty and seventy five million dollars in recognised sales during the second half of 2025 as early service starts for anchor operators. That guidance signals the moment when AST transitions from pre revenue venture to an operating telecom provider able to self finance part of its network build.
Technically the constellation is designed to be lean rather than vast. About ninety BlueBird satellites will deliver continuous coverage between latitudes fifty six north and fifty six south, a band that includes every capital city in Latin America and most of its rural territory. Each spacecraft creates more than five thousand dynamic cells and uses existing mobile spectrum around eight hundred and seven hundred megahertz, enabling signals to penetrate foliage and masonry that often block higher frequencies.
Proof of concept is no longer theoretical. In February Verizon and AT&T completed high definition video calls that linked a handset routed through a BlueBird satellite to another device on terrestrial LTE. One month later Rakuten Mobile repeated the experiment in Japan using unmodified Samsung phones, confirming that the system works across multiple operator bands and continents.
Factory output is now the critical path. Avellan told analysts that a semi automated production line can turn out six satellites per month, allowing forty units to launch in 2025 on a mix of Falcon 9, New Glenn and India’s GSLV rockets. Five flight contracts covering the next nine months are already signed, setting a tempo of one launch roughly every six weeks.
The commercial implications for Latin America are substantial. Research by Fierce Network estimates a thirty billion dollar annual opportunity for satellite delivered mobile data in the region, where two hundred fifteen million residents lack reliable broadband. Education ministries in Colombia and Peru have pencilled in satellite backhaul for thousands of rural schools, while health agencies model telemedicine links in Amazonian clinics once continuous coverage is available.
Investors weighing the prospects note that AST’s capital intensity per subscriber is far lower than that of terrestrial tower rollouts in jungle or mountain terrain. The company expects marginal user acquisition cost in underserved zones to fall by eighty per cent compared with a traditional cell site, a dynamic that offers room for competitive pricing and healthy margins even as capacity increases.
Competition is heating up. Starlink is deploying thousands of small satellites for household terminals, yet its direct to device variant remains in beta and relies on higher Ku band spectrum that struggles indoors. By contrast AST banks on a smaller fleet of large platforms using low band cellular channels that enter buildings with ease. Analysts at SpaceNews suggest that once twenty five Block 2 satellites are operational the service will provide non stop roaming across the United States, and that forty five to sixty units will be enough for continuous links over Latin America, Europe and Japan.
Challenges persist, from reflecting sunlight that annoys astronomers to the sheer engineering complexity of maintaining multi tonne satellites with fold out structures wider than a tennis court. Yet the programme enjoys rare bipartisan regulatory support in Washington and an expanding patent moat exceeding three thousand four hundred filings. If the upcoming launches stay on schedule AST SpaceMobile could switch on beta service for Verizon and AT&T before the end of this year, setting the stage for a full commercial rollout in early 2026 that may redefine what it means to be connected in some of the world’s most isolated communities.
Source: La Nacion
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