- Multi-carrier MVNO US Mobile is launching a bundle with AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile + Starlink, pitching a plan that combines terrestrial wireless and satellite broadband on one bill
- CEO Ahmed Khattak shared how they spent a decade on the “plumbing” that stitches together disparate carrier cores, enabling dynamic switching across land-based networks and LEO satellite
- Boost Mobile already sells Starlink in some retail stores, while Mint Mobile is pushing a new prepaid 5G home and wireless bundle
Some might consider this the ultimate bundle: AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon – all three of them – for mobile phone service, along with satellite-based broadband from Starlink.
That’s what US Mobile, an MVNO, apparently plans to offer starting on Thursday. In a rather lengthy teaser on Reddit, US Mobile CEO Ahmed Khattak talks about how his company plans to offer cell phone plans, plus home internet from space, all on one bill.
“I won't tease numbers too hard, but imagine a plan for less than $50 a month that spans every major network in the United States, extends across Canada and Mexico, includes internet from space at home, and roams with you across the world. That's the direction. That's the shape of what we're building toward,” Khattak wrote.
He referred to the carriers by their US Mobile code names: Warp for Verizon, Dark Star for AT&T and Light Speed for T-Mobile. US Mobile customers can choose one carrier as their provider or pay a little extra each month to use all three.
US Mobile CEO explains the plumbing
The CEO got into the weeds a little bit to explain why people deserve to understand why “multi-network” and “super carrier” basically don’t exist outside of US Mobile.
Every mobile network uses different CDR formats, mediation layers, rating engines and so on, he said.
“Each network has its own HSS/HLR, its own SIM and eSIM profile management, its own activation and porting flows, its own policy control. None of these systems were designed to talk to each other. They were designed assuming you're a single carrier with a single stack,” he said.
But US Mobile set out to build the “plumbing” that makes everything exist in a unified fashion – and it took a decade of deeply technical work to pull it off.
“Adding a satellite layer on top of it is the moment all of that work starts to compound, because the same unification layer that lets us hand a line off between three terrestrial networks is the layer that now lets us hand a session off between terrestrial and celestial,” he said.
In a nod to the fact that a portion of the population doesn’t like SpaceX/Starlink founder Elon Musk, Khattak said he respects that some people, on principle, won’t use products tied to a certain company or the people who run them.
But it’s US Mobile’s job to build the best possible connectivity layer for its customers, and the satellite network they’re integrating with right now is the best LEO option on earth. “Refusing to integrate it would mean giving our customers a worse product to make a statement. That isn't a tradeoff I'm willing to make on their behalf,” he said.
Boost Mobile sells Starlink
US Mobile isn’t the first MVNO to sell Starlink internet services. As part of a pilot project, EchoStar’s Boost Mobile prepaid brand sells Starlink in about 120 stores. It’s tied to EchoStar’s pending deal to sell spectrum to Starlink parent SpaceX, per Light Reading reporting earlier this year.
Boost Mobile has about 3,000 stores and it also sells internet services from Comcast, Charter and Cox in some stores, depending on the geographical region, said Jeff Moore, principal of Wave7 Research.
In contrast, US Mobile doesn’t have a broad physical retail presence, although it’s very active online and through promotional activities, he said.
T-Mobile’s Mint bundle
US Mobile’s move comes as T-Mobile’s prepaid brand Mint Mobile debuted a bundle to counter “Big Cable” that includes 5G Home MINTernet and unlimited wireless for $45/month. One catch, however, is customers need to make an upfront payment of $540 to lock in that price.
Moore said a lot of people won’t be able to take advantage of the Mint offer, either because of their personal finances or they’re in a neighborhood that doesn’t offer T-Mobile’s 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) service.
“I know there’s a 14-day moneyback guarantee, and that’s probably what they would counter back with, but if you’re going to sign up for a year of service, how do you know that you have adequate service at your address? Some addresses are allowed for T-Mobile home internet and others are not,” Moore said.
“T-Mobile has a history of being judicious in how much bandwidth they allocate to home internet. They historically have made sure that this is excess capacity that they’re allocating and not capacity that is being actively used by their mobile users,” he noted.
It’s hard to know how many people are going to jump on any of these bundles, but one thing is for sure: Bundles are here to stay for the foreseeable future.