T-Mobile spent five years trying to get rid of the exact spectrum Elon just called "the last critical piece" of complete phone coverage in America.
This 800 MHz block is Sprint's old Nextel spectrum, the stuff that powered push-to-talk walkie-talkie phones in 2004. The DOJ forced T-Mobile to divest it as a condition of the $26 billion Sprint merger. Dish had first rights at $3.59 billion and walked away because it couldn't raise the money. T-Mobile finally offloaded it to an investment firm called Grain Management last year for $2.9 billion plus a spectrum swap.
Grain's original plan was selling it to utilities for private networks.
Fourteen months later, SpaceX buys the whole portfolio, and shares of the carriers who passed on it fall as much as 8% in a single afternoon.
Here's why it matters so much. Starlink's satellite signal at 2 GHz can reach your phone outdoors, but it dies at the first wall. 800 MHz penetrates buildings. Most phones already have the band built in. So satellites handle the open sky, this low-band layer handles indoors, and suddenly Starlink Mobile covers everywhere a normal carrier does without the tower network.
Stack the moves. $17 billion for EchoStar's 50 MHz of 2 GHz spectrum. FCC approval for 15,000 Gen2 satellites this week. Now the low-band coverage layer.
Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile paid $81 billion in a single auction for C-band spectrum in 2021, then spent years and tens of billions more deploying it on towers. SpaceX assembled a nationwide carrier out of a distressed-asset sale, a forced divestiture castoff, and rockets it already owns.
The walkie-talkie spectrum from 2004 ended up being the piece that lets satellites replace cell towers. Nobody who touched it for twenty years saw that coming.
REVEALED: An anti-ICE protest group advertised PAID organizing jobs at up to $36 AN HOUR.
Hourly pay. Bonuses. Daily fundraising targets.
The group is GAIA. Its job advertisement names “ICE Breakers” among the campaigns recruits would work on, alongside organizing and fundraising duties.
Its published Home Depot campaign has this goal:
“shut down every Home Depot in LA for one day”
Its Hilton campaign pressures hotels to stop housing ICE agents and encourages refundable reservations followed by cancellations within hotel policies.
And an October 24–25 training will rehearse a fictional campaign against “Stilton Hotels” and an immigration-enforcement agency called “FICE.”
The curriculum includes choosing targets, nonviolent direct action and “OPSEC & Security Culture.”
@Juliedonuts There might be some difficulties in the streets as well. (Planned riots) People sometimes have a difficult time accepting what must be done. As you said “prepared”.
CONSPIRACY THEORY NO MORE!
EDISON RESEARCH CONFIRMS: Dominion helped overthrow the U.S. government on November 3, 2020.
States using Dominion Voting Systems switched 435,000 votes from Trump to Biden.
Dominion deleted 2.7 million Trump votes nationwide.
Including over 1 million votes switched from President Trump to Biden in Pennsylvania alone.
📝 BAN ALL VOTING MACHINES.
@patriot_karma Done it more than once in the last few years. Healthy minds need the break. You’ll know when the time feels right to return.
My follow list has shrunk by a lot as anyone not focused on truth (instead of doubt and strife) is either controlled or uninformed.
Soon…..🇺🇸
@Founder_Tribune@elonmusk INTP 5w6 who spent life realizing he could learn more outside of school than in it. Of course the caveat, without the credentials you waste your life excluded from the environments where you could truly contribute.
Journalists are supposed to operate “without fear or favor." That means getting close enough to sources to uncover the truth, but never so close that you surrender your independence to them.
A journalist who takes orders from the institutions they are supposed to scrutinize is no longer acting independently.
That is the difference between us and the @nytimes reporter I confronted: we don’t take orders from the national security state.
That independence has consequences. They continue to fear us and sue us because we don't take orders from the deep state.
@JoeLange Considering the ___ set him up, think he’s been freed and agreed to support Trump?
‘Deals must be made….’
Are they targeting him or someone in his life? (Infiltration)