SpaceX coverage network designs draw Wall Street's eye. Here's what analysts think
Source: CNBC ·
Rooftops and billboards may be more important than hefty infrastructure.
From the source
Following news that SpaceX is in talks to access as many as 80,000 cell sites to grab market share from the Big Three telecoms, some analysts on Wall Street are making a key distinction that may shed light on SpaceX's strategy. They're differentiating cell towers from the cell sites on which those towers operate, which may open up new real estate for SpaceX to take advantage of. "Although the term cell site and cell tower is often used interchangeably, cell sites include cell towers, but may also include rooftops, billboards, water tanks, distributed antenna systems, and small cells," Michael Ng at Goldman Sachs said in a Friday note to clients following the Bloomberg news report . Analysts at Citi also questioned the specific "forms" of coverage that SpaceX is gunning for, noting that some sort of smaller cell tower may be the intention. "Our scenarios interprets the press report as 80k+ macro sites on colocation structures, while we recognize a portion of these sites may reflect…