Amid Elon Musk's ambitious plans to launch a new Starlink mobile service for US consumers, T-Mobile CFO Peter Osvaldik has claimed that the billionaire's strategy should be laughed out of the room. Speaking at Citi's 2026 Global TMT Conference last week, Osvaldik pushed back on the idea that satellite-to-phone service can replace traditional wireless networks.
As per Osvaldik, Starlink was not a threat to traditional telecom operators. "It's not a competitive threat from a wireless perspective at all," he said, as per Business Insider.
"If we, as a management team, over the course of two months, changed the strategy to how we're going to roll out a wireless network like a dozen times, it would laugh us out of the room and kick me out of the management team appropriately."
Osvaldik highlighted that signals from Starlink's satellites could be blocked by typical city infrastructure, which could render its services useless.
"You can't get through buildings, walls. You can't even get through a Tesla windscreen," Osvaldik said. "You can have 1 million satellites up there with all the spectrum in the world, you can't break the fundamental laws of physics."
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Musk's Ambitious Venture
Starlink's move into retail mobile contracts would be one of the company's most significant commercial expansions. The move would require Starlink to build a new retail offering, thereby directly competing with the three big US network operators Verizon Wireless, AT&T and T-Mobile.
While most traditional operators use cell towers to relay signals, SpaceX wants to use a huge number of small cell stations, called femtocells, to reach the users.
"Essentially, they're really just Starlink dishes that also provide connectivity in the mobile spectrum bands, and have them be all over the place," Musk told investors.
"The Starlink antennas are located on the roofs of houses and businesses, so they've got a clear view for providing connectivity directly to cellphones on the ground."
