Notwithstanding reports of a further delay to the launch date for AST SpaceMobile’s latest FM1 satellite, the company says it has completed development of the electronics board with its new AST5000 ASIC chip – the cornerstone of the company’s next-generation BlueBird satellites.
“After five years of rigorous engineering and production, representing an equivalent of 150+ human years of intensive work, this proprietary technology has 10x data capacity from our Block 1 satellites, meaning 10,000 MHz of processing bandwidth and peak speeds of 120 Mbps. That is enough for millions of connections – voice and video calls, texts, streaming – every day,” said AST.
This is positive news, but it coincided with a mixed report on AST from investment firm William Blair. The firm cautioned investors in AST by saying that AST faced “numerous risks” and reminded shareholders that it wasn’t so long ago (May 2024) when AST’s shares were trading at about $2 per share.
William Blair pulls no punches in listing the potential rivals to AST (Starlink, Kuiper, Apple, Telesat’s Lightspeed, etc.) and “as a result of intense competition many of AST’s 50 telco partners may not convert to actual paying customers”. Indeed, it warns that some of these key partners (Verizon, AT&T, Vodafone, Rakuten) may switch their loyalty from AST to one of these rival services.
Finally, if all this negativity wasn’t enough, it bluntly says the market for satellite-based connectivity to phones simply may not materialise. Verizon’s Chief Revenue Officer is already on record as saying the demand for satellite offerings (or D2D) as “insignificant”.