Rogers customers wondering whether Starlink Mobile could one day go around their carrier got a hint this week. During the company’s third quarter earnings call on Friday, CEO Tony Staffieri said SpaceX’s public filings with federal regulators show it intends to work with wireless operators here.
Staffieri pointed to what SpaceX has said “publicly in their filings with ISED,” noting the company intends “to work with wireless operators” in Canada. That stands in contrast with the U.S., where SpaceX has been buying spectrum for Starlink Mobile and has reportedly weighed selling phone service directly to consumers.
Rogers is also leaning further into its existing deal. Staffieri said the carrier is “proactively deepening” its collaboration with Starlink on satellite-to-mobile connectivity and that Rogers “intends to lead Canada” as it works with Starlink Mobile to bring expanded coverage and capability to Canadians. He didn’t share any new features, pricing or timing.
The comments came in response to an analyst question from UBS about how Starlink could change the competitive landscape. Staffieri said Rogers has had the satellite product in market with its current capabilities “for almost a year now,” and that the company understands its use cases and “its limitations today.” Rogers Satellite currently handles texting, text-to-911 and select apps like WhatsApp and Google Maps, and it also offers coverage in the U.S. through T-Mobile’s T-Satellite network.
Staffieri then laid out why Canada is different. Much less spectrum is available here, he said, and the bands tied to the most recently acquired U.S. spectrum are “extremely limited” or not available in this country, where they are largely used by the public sector. Canada’s population is also much smaller and concentrated in key urban markets, and its foreign ownership rules include ownership of spectrum. Spectrum and foreign ownership were the same hurdles we flagged when a SpaceX mobile network first looked possible earlier this year.
On home internet, Staffieri described Starlink’s market share as “very small,” saying it mostly serves rural markets without other alternatives. Rogers partners with Starlink to sell the service to small businesses, adding its own business application services on top.
He called satellite a “complementary evolving product” to Rogers’ wireline and terrestrial wireless services. Answering a later question from JPMorgan, Staffieri said the company’s rural expansion is increasingly coming through its partnership with SpaceX, and described the use case implications in the enterprise space, including IoT, as “tremendous.”
For customers, the takeaway is that if SpaceX follows what Staffieri described in its filings, Starlink Mobile will reach Canadian phones through carriers rather than as a standalone rival to Rogers, Bell and Telus. Competitors are taking a different route, with Bell building its own satellite ground station and Telus completing its first satellite-to-phone test with AST SpaceMobile, both testing voice and data beyond basic texting.
Would you switch carriers for better satellite coverage, or is texting from the backcountry enough for you?
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