AT&T CFO addresses ‘elephant’ in the room: SpaceX

Appearing at the Mizuho Technology Conference in New York, AT&T CFO Pascal Desroches was asked about what some may call the “elephant in the room,” i.e., SpaceX’s increasingly aggressive moves to chip away at the broadband market. His answer? Between fiber, cable, fixed wireless, and the wireless infrastructure that exists in the U.S., that probably covers 99 percent of the population, but there’s 1 percent of the population that’s not covered today in very rural areas. “I think satellite is a great solution for that,” he told moderator Jennifer Fritzsche. The cost to deploy traditional infrastructure in very rural areas is prohibitive, but within urban and suburban areas, the cost per bit to deliver connectivity with the infrastructure that’s in place now is lower than you’re going to get with satellite. “Those markets are competitive with well-established competitors,” he said.