• The chairman of T-Mobile and CEO of its parent company has commented on Starlink Mobile
• He argues that a $200 billion investment in spectrum and infrastructure is needed for it to compete
• Despite that, he's taking it seriously and sees parallels with Tesla and the car industry

Between partnering with Qualcomm and getting the green light to operate internationally, SpaceX has taken some major steps towards making Starlink Mobile a rival to the big carriers. And that's just been acknowledged by Tim Höttges — the chairman of T-Mobile and CEO of its parent company, Deutsche Telekom — in a recent earnings call where he said that “I take his [Elon Musk] attempt serious [sic].”

In the Deutsche Telekom conference call, Höttges went on to highlight just how much work — and investment — will be required for this attempt to actually deliver a real rival.

Firstly, Starlink Mobile will likely require a lot more spectrum than it currently has, with Höttges saying “he [Musk] has now bought 76 megahertz of spectrum. By the way, we have 400 megahertz. So if you now say, okay, he can buy the spectrum prospectively, do your math. These are kind of triple digit billions, which are needed to gain the spectrum position.”

A "$200 billion" investment

And it’s not just spectrum — Starlink Mobile will also need a lot of infrastructure on the ground, with Höttges explaining that "then he has to build a network. I can tell you, we have 85,000 towers. No, he can rent towers, no question. But this is another $20 billion to $30 billion, which are required. Put antennas on it. Okay, you can buy antennas and you can get maybe even in a cheaper way or you construct it in a new way, but you need money for that."

Between all that, Höttges concludes that Starlink Mobile will need “at least minimum $200 billion” to “play” in this industry, and likely more. And even then, it’s an industry which Höttges argues T-Mobile and the other major carriers have “professionalized over the last twenty years” — suggesting that even with that investment, Starlink Mobile will lack the experience of the other carriers.

Still, it doesn’t sound like Höttges is totally counting Musk’s telecom dreams out, remarking at the end of all that “welcome to the party.” So this looks set to be a long and expensive road for SpaceX and Starlink Mobile — and experts mostly agree that becoming the fourth big mobile network in the US will be a major challenge...

Analysis: A long game, but there are Tesla parallels

From electric cars to aerospace, Elon Musk has an unrivaled track record of disrupting industries — but turning Starlink Mobile into a true rival to the network giants could be one of his biggest challenges yet.

"There are a wide variety of challenges and roadblocks that stand in the way of Starlink Mobile," Ookla's Lead Industry Analyst, Mike Dano, told us. "For example, it must build radios based on Qualcomm’s technology. Then it must affix those radios atop cell towers nationwide. Then it must launch thousands of new satellites that support the spectrum it’s working to purchase from EchoStar," he said.

And that's far from the end of the list. "Then it will need to sell phones that support the various spectrum bands it hopes to use in its network. Then it will need to create an effective retail strategy to entice customers away from existing cellular providers in the U.S. And there’s still an outstanding question about whether a future Starlink Mobile network will be robust enough to support users’ needs," he added.

However, Dano says that Starlink Mobile's Qualcomm agreement this week was a big step towards it becoming "a credible fourth nationwide mobile network provider in the U.S", even if that process will "take several years".

Telecoms expert Tim Farrar, President at TMF Associates, agrees that an EchoStar deal is the most likely key to unlocking the spectrum that T-Mobile's Tim Höttges referred to in the earnings call. "I think a purchase of the remaining EchoStar spectrum assets and a settlement with the tower companies is the easiest and quickest way to go about that", he said, referring to those missing pieces for Qualcomm's equipment.

Still, we can expect this story to develop quickly in 2027, and Tim Höttges is well aware of the parallels with the car industry, which Tesla disrupted with new technology. "I would compare it with let's say inventing Tesla and bringing electromobility into a kind of legacy combustion engine industry. That is the same moment we have and this moment is now here," he said.

"We have a new kind of player who is coming to the ecosystem. He has chipsets, he has data centers, he has AI, he has satellites, he wants to go for mobile services and he goes for handsets. He will go as well for maybe integrating social media or at least agent models into his service. So he is creating a new way of communication services — it's not that you can compare it 'mobile to mobile'," he added.

"That is why I'm saying I take that super serious because I was witnessing what happened to the car industry — they were ignoring it for too long and we have to face the situation." In other words, expect this to be a major theme of 2027, even if the full story could take years to play out.

When I’m searching for the best NBN deals, the main factor I’m taking note of is the monthly price. Second to that come perks which, to be honest, are becoming rarer and rarer. So when Dodo announced it’s now offering its NBN customers totally unlimited mobile data via its postpaid SIM plans, I simply had to take notice.

This offer, available to new and existing customers, works as follows — sign up for any Dodo NBN plan, and you’re eligible for the new Infinity plan, a AU$19/m SIM-only offer that includes unlimited data, capped at 50Mbps.

Unlimited 5G mobile data on the Optus network for just AU$19/m is a standout deal in itself. But combine it with Dodo’s low-cost NBN plans — now on the receiving end of an AU$30/m discount for six months — and you've got a package that's hard to ignore.

Unlimited mobile plans aren’t entirely new. While virtually all telcos will allow you to continue using data, if you exceed your monthly allowance, download speeds are usually throttled to around 2Mbps. However, Felix has been offering truly unlimited data SIM plans for some time, and while speeds are restricted, they're now available at up to 80Mbps.

Unlimited data at 80Mbps, of course, sounds great, but it'll cost you AU$50/m. Dodo's unlimited data plan, meanwhile, is capped at 50Mbps but costs just AU$19/m, making it arguably the better-value option.

Take my favourite NBN speed tier of all — NBN 500 — as an example. You'll pay just AU$62.99/m for the first six months for Dodo's plan (far less than the current AU$95/m average). Throw in the unlimited mobile data plan, and your monthly total comes to AU$81.99/m — that's cheaper than some NBN 25 plans! Once the six-month introductory period is up, your ongoing monthly total will be AU$111.99.

There's no end date to Dodo's unlimited mobile data offer, but the discounted NBN plans for Black Friday sales in Australia are time-sensitive. So, to secure the lowest possible price, you'll need to sign up before December 8.