Analyzing Amazon’s $11.6 billion Globalstar purchase
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- 4 min read
April. 15, 2026
By Caleb Henry
Space Symposium conference goers woke up Tuesday morning to news they might have expected at last month’s Satellite 2026 show: Amazon buying Louisiana satellite operator Globalstar. The deal, expected to close in 2027, positions Amazon as a competitor in the emerging Direct-to-Device (DTD) market alongside AST SpaceMobile, Equatys, and rival SpaceX. At Quilty, we believe the deal will turbocharge the Globalstar constellation, while adding some challenges faced by the Amazon Leo broadband fleet.
What the deal does
Amazon gains access to Globalstar’s 24-satellite constellation, existing operations, and most importantly, its spectrum. Globalstar has about 25 MHz of spectrum that can be partially or fully applied to DTD – 8.725 MHz of L-band (plus a 0.95 MHz sliver shared with Iridium) and 16.5 MHz of S-band. Globalstar's spectrum is asymmetric — roughly 8 MHz of uplink paired against 16 MHz of downlink — which caps two-way DTD throughput. Closing that gap likely means acquiring additional L-band, making Iridium's adjacent 1618-1626 MHz allocation a clear target. Iridium hit a 52-week high on the Globalstar announcement.
For decades, Globalstar has been a “spectrum play,” with management pursuing opportunities to sell the company for a hefty sum in exchange for rights to its airwaves. Years of attempts at repurposing Globalstar satellite spectrum for terrestrial applications were underwhelming until 2022, when Apple signed an exclusive contract to leverage 85% of Globalstar network capacity to link iPhones in remote locations. The Apple deal breathed new life into Globalstar, providing funding needed to replenish and expand its aging constellation.
If Apple revived Globalstar, Amazon will turbocharge it. Tuesday’s deal dramatically widens the addressable market for Globalstar by giving it a pathway to an even better constellation, as well as for Amazon, which now targets “hundreds of millions of customer endpoints,” up from “tens of millions” originally. Amazon says it will continue serving Apple iPhone and Watch customers using Globalstar’s current fleet and forthcoming MDA Space constellation (keeping that deal safe), while enabling expansions previously not available to Globalstar, namely:
New customers. Amazon will pursue Mobile Network Operators as customers, something Globalstar was precluded from doing by nature of its Apple deal.
New markets. Amazon targets consumer, enterprise and government customers, marking a notable expansion from early DTD efforts industry-wide that focused largely on consumers.
What’s next?
Closing the deal hinges on Globalstar hitting certain HIBLEO-4 replacement milestones. Miss a separate set of Apple service-continuity milestones, and the deal price drops by up to $110M — a penalty that flows through as reduced per-share consideration. Assuming the merger closes, it's clear Amazon plans its own next-gen constellation built in-house, like its broadband fleet. That brings potential for a dramatic rearchitecting of the DTD constellations in ways that could enable much more compelling service.
DTD satellites have more demanding requirements than broadband, because phones and other devices are designed to connect only to nearby towers, not to infrastructure all the way in space.
DTD operators get around these challenges by designing satellites with significantly higher power and flying them in lower orbits. Globalstar was able to do the power upgrade with MDA Space, but its orbit is high. At 1,414 kilometers, Globalstar sits about twice as high as AST SpaceMobile and Iridium, and four times as high as Starlink DTC. Lowering the orbit is expensive because it requires more satellites. As a standalone, Apple-backed company, Globalstar was planning a fleet of 80 satellites.
While not yet confirmed, we believe Amazon’s acquisition of Globalstar provides an opportunity for a significant rearchitecting of the constellation at a lower orbit, requiring a lot more satellites (hundreds or thousands) but enabling even better service. The exact details should become clearer when Amazon submits its plans to the FCC. Amazon said it will deploy its own next-gen DTD constellation in 2028, designed with “substantially higher spectrum use and efficiency than legacy direct-to-cell systems” to enable voice, data and messaging.
The Challenges
As with the Amazon Leo broadband constellation, launch access will remain a key constraint. Amazon has enough internal demand for launch to justify owning a launch vehicle, but has so far chosen to procure launch services through third parties. Global launch capacity is spread thin, with constellations from the Space Development Agency, Telesat Lightspeed, and Eutelsat/IRIS2 already straining supply. SpaceX repurposing Pad 39A at Cape Canaveral for Starship and more Falcon Heavies, and less of its flagship Falcon 9s, may further exacerbate the issue. So might Golden Dome.
Manufacturing challenges could also crop up, if the need for new silicon chips has an impact on payload production. Amazon will likely need to establish a new production line for DTD satellites, if not a new factory. These challenges could be eased by sticking to the Gen-1 broadband bus, which would streamline the work of building two constellations.
We don't see U.S. regulatory risk as a near-term obstacle. Yes, Carr publicly flogged Amazon over its broadband deployment timeline, but these are two separate constellations. Amazon's DTD filing will start a new, second FCC clock — six years to 50% deployment, nine to full build — and Carr has already called the Globalstar deal consistent with the FCC's long-term DTD competition vision.
The FCC isn't the only gate, though. In an 8-K filing with the SEC, Globalstar lists three categories of required regulatory approval: antitrust, foreign direct investment, and telecommunications. DoJ antitrust review is standard for an $11.6B merger, but the FDI approvals could be more complicated — Globalstar operates ground stations and holds spectrum authorizations across 120+ countries, and several jurisdictions screen foreign acquisitions of telecom infrastructure. Intervenors add another variable: Iridium petitioned the FCC in late 2025 to expand into Globalstar's L-band, and SpaceX — denied access to the Big LEO bands in 2024 — has every reason to oppose the spectrum transfer.
The broader sector rallied on the news. The party that's not smiling? SpaceX – which now faces a second well-capitalized U.S. competitor in DTD, and lost its best shot at blocking Amazon from ever getting globally licensed MSS spectrum.
