AT&T CEO explains why AT&T can withstand satellite competition

There are lone a fistful of industries successful America wherever the infrastructure vantage is truthful profoundly embedded that caller competitors, careless of their superior oregon tech, look a decade-long ascent to attack parity. Telecom is 1 of them.

But SpaceX's Starlink is not a emblematic competitor. And AT&T (T) CEO John Stankey knows it.

Stankey appeared connected CNBC's Squawk Box connected Wednesday, July 22, to sermon AT&T's beardown second-quarter results and tract questions astir the outer menace directly. And his answers were measured, confident, and revealing. 

AT&T closed the week connected Friday, July 24, astatine $24.13, up 5.10% connected the league pursuing earnings, according to Yahoo Finance. The institution reported Q2 revenues of $31.6 billion, up 2.3% twelvemonth implicit year, and announced an accelerated $10 cardinal stock buyback programme for 2026.

Stankey's halfway connection connected Starlink was that competitors are welcome. Yes. But they are arriving precise precocious to a enactment that AT&T has been hosting for decades.

Also Read: History of AT&T: Timeline and Facts

What AT&T CEO really said astir Starlink — the infrastructure statement

Stankey did not disregard outer competition. In fact, helium contextualized it successful a mode that tells you however AT&T thinks astir the menace internally.

There are going to beryllium caller competitors, and they're going to beryllium folks that travel in. But the world is that they're coming to the crippled precise precocious aft this manufacture has been established.

Stankey continued connected Squawk Box. "They person to drawback up with important amounts of infrastructure concern that's been going connected for decades wrong hospitals, connected assemblage campuses, successful stadiums, successful gangly buildings."

That past condemnation matters the most, and present is the crushed why. Indoor sum is the occupation outer cannot lick with the aforesaid economics arsenic terrestrial networks. 

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Every high-rise flat building, each infirmary basement, each stadium concourse represents infrastructure that Starlink cannot service from 340 miles supra Earth. 

AT&T handles much than 98% of postulation generated by its converged customers connected terrestrial networks today, according to the Interview.

Satellite addresses the remaining fraction of clip a lawsuit walks off-grid. In fact, Stankey says AT&T volition code that by adjacent twelvemonth done the partnerships they've already established.

Related: AT&T whitethorn beryllium near retired of the Starlink woody everyone wants