SpaceX Picks Qualcomm Chips for Starlink Mobile 5G Towers

SpaceX has chosen Qualcomm to supply the core chips for Starlink Mobile, the ground based 5G network SpaceX wants to build across the United States, with deployment starting in 2027.

Qualcomm announced the deal Wednesday in a press release from San Diego. It describes a multi year agreement covering tens of thousands of sites, rolled out in waves. For SpaceX, it is the clearest sign yet that the company plans to run cell towers on the ground, not just satellites in orbit.

Two Dragonwing chips and a 64 by 64 radio

The hardware comes from Qualcomm's Dragonwing line of cellular infrastructure platforms. Two pieces do most of the work:

• Dragonwing QRU100 handles processing inside the radio units. These are massive MIMO radios with 64 transmit and 64 receive paths, a design that lets a single site serve many phones at once by steering signals toward them.
• Dragonwing QDU100 runs Layer 1 processing, the fast, timing sensitive baseband work that turns radio signals into data.

Qualcomm is also supplying what it calls commercial grade Layer 1 software, so SpaceX is not starting that layer from zero. The network will be multi band, according to the release, though it does not list which frequencies each wave will use.

Durga Malladi, who runs technology planning, edge solutions and data center at Qualcomm Technologies, said in the release that the combination of massive MIMO, dedicated processing and software is built for a nationwide network. He also framed the project as groundwork for what Qualcomm calls AI native 6G. In other words, Qualcomm is pitching this 5G buildout as a commercial first step, with the same towers and partnership expected to carry into the next generation of wireless.

Tens of thousands of sites, starting in 2027

Malladi told Yahoo Finance that deployment begins next year and should "ramp up pretty rapidly." Under the deal, SpaceX would put Qualcomm silicon across tens of thousands of towers nationwide. Neither company gave an exact site count, a price or a date for the first commercial service.

Michael Nicolls, senior vice president of Starlink, said in the release that SpaceX is building the "first fully-integrated nationwide satellite and terrestrial network," and that Qualcomm's platform will speed up work on its base station architecture. That last point matters. SpaceX designs most of its own satellite hardware, and buying proven baseband chips is a faster route than building a terrestrial radio stack in house.

We covered the scale of SpaceX's plan for a fourth US carrier last month. The Qualcomm agreement is the first named supplier deal behind that ambition.

How the towers fit with satellites and 800 MHz spectrum

Starlink Mobile is meant to combine two layers. Satellites cover places towers never reach. The new ground network fills in where most people actually use their phones.

Last month SpaceX announced an agreement to buy 800 MHz spectrum licenses, Yahoo Finance reported. SpaceX has described that low band spectrum as a coverage layer that gets signal inside buildings, something satellite links struggle with. It sits alongside the global 2 GHz mid band spectrum SpaceX already uses.

Paying for all of this is not trivial. SpaceX has been raising tens of billions in debt, mostly tied to AI computing, and a nationwide tower buildout adds another large bill. SpaceX shares fell 6.4% in premarket trading Wednesday, TheStreet reported, on a morning crowded with earnings and election news.

The carrier question still open

A network of towers is only half of a carrier. The Washington Post reported on November 2 that SpaceX was in talks with EchoStar to operate its own service through the Boost Mobile brand, according to Yahoo Finance, after AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon reportedly turned down SpaceX's requests to resell their networks. Neither SpaceX nor Qualcomm addressed that in Wednesday's announcement.

For Qualcomm, the deal is a large infrastructure win at a time when most attention on the company falls on phone chips like the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme. For phone users, nothing changes yet. The first Starlink Mobile towers are a 2027 story, and the real test will be whether SpaceX can sign up customers fast enough to justify tens of thousands of sites. More on that as it develops on our tech page.