The FCC Said Go. AST SpaceMobile Still Has to Get There.
The FCC handed AST SpaceMobile permission to deploy a 248-satellite direct-to-device constellation on Monday. The company currently has six of them in orbit.
That gap is the actual story. The FCC order, designated DA-26-391 and released April 21, authorizes AST to operate a full non-geostationary constellation for supplemental cellular coverage from space, enabling commercial service across the US in partnership with AT&T, Verizon, and the government-backed FirstNet network. It also clears international feeder links for AST's 28 carrier partnerships outside the US. The regulatory work is done.
The launch work is not.
AST had projected four orbital flights by the end of Q1 2026. The first one flew on April 19, three months late, and failed to reach the correct orbit. BlueBird-7, the first Block 2 satellite attempted on Blue Origin New Glenn's third flight, ended up in an off-nominal orbit too low for its onboard thrusters to compensate. Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said one of the upper stage BE-3U engine's second burn produced insufficient thrust. The satellite separated from the rocket, powered on, and will now de-orbit. Blue Origin is leading the anomaly investigation with FAA oversight. AST says the loss is covered by insurance and that BlueBirds 8 through 10 are roughly 30 days from shipping. The company says it still expects one to two launches per month on average through the rest of 2026, targeting roughly 45 satellites in orbit by year-end.
It needs 45 to 60 for continuous US coverage.
The Block 2 BlueBirds are genuinely large hardware. Each one weighs 6,100 kilograms and deploys a 223-square-meter phased-array antenna, the largest commercial communications array in low Earth orbit, roughly 3.5 times the size of the Block 1 satellites that launched on a Falcon 9 in 2024. The antenna is designed to connect directly to standard smartphones at peak rates of 120 Mbps using the same cellular bands a phone would use with a ground tower. No special hardware required on the user end.
One detail the FCC order buries: the approval covers lower-band spectrum only — 698 to 960 MHz — rather than the mid-band spectrum AST acquired last year. Mid-band is where higher throughput lives. A separate FCC proceeding would be required to use it. What got licensed Monday is real service, but it is not the ceiling of what AST is building toward.
SpaceX and T-Mobile launched Starlink Mobile in the US in 2025 and have since accumulated 59 carrier partnerships globally, per a February 2026 GSA count. AST has 28. Ookla's April 2026 market report found that only 0.46 percent of US Speedtest users registered a direct-to-device satellite connection in March — meaning the addressable market is still tiny, but Starlink is already in it and AST is not. SpaceX and T-Mobile raised interference and collision-risk objections during the FCC proceedings; the commission overruled them, accepting AST's narrowbeamforming approach as sufficient safeguard.
The FCC also extended authorization to cover FirstNet, the government-backed public-safety broadband network AT&T operates. That makes AST the first non-Starlink system licensed to provide satellite connectivity directly to first responders in the US. The UK approved a license modification for AST's British partner VodafoneThree under similar terms.
Amazon announced plans on April 14 to acquire Globalstar for roughly $11 billion, adding a third competitor targeting a 2028 constellation deployment. Three different architectures — Starlink's high-cadence small-sat approach, AST's large-array low-count design, and Amazon's Globalstar-spectrum-plus-Kuiper strategy — are now on converging timelines.
AST is currently manufacturing through BlueBird-32. The production line is moving faster than the launch manifest. Whether the cadence catches up before Starlink locks in its market lead is the question the FCC order does not answer.