Satellite operators earned an estimated $0.91 billion from direct-to-device (D2D) connectivity in 2025, almost all of it wholesale, and part of it possibly one-time. An estimated majority came through SpaceX’s revenue-sharing agreements with mobile operators, and Globalstar reported $0.17 billion of wholesale capacity revenue from its contract with Apple. At the satellite-operator layer, D2D is a wholesale business, not a consumer subscription market. On my estimates, MNO-partnered D2D, in which mobile operators pay satellite operators a revenue share or capacity fee, is the largest and fastest-growing channel.

On 6 October 2026, the Federal Communications Commission licensed SpaceX to deploy a constellation for direct-to-device service. The licence opens the question the next eighteen months will settle: whether that money keeps flowing wholesale, through mobile operators and device makers, or a spectrum-owning satellite operator starts selling mobile service direct.

SpaceX is also buying spectrum. Its purchase of EchoStar’s licences carries total consideration of about $19.6 billion, many times what D2D earns today. The bands also carry terrestrial rights that SpaceX says it will build out, so the price is not a valuation of D2D alone. The FCC bars commercial use of those bands until the transaction’s second step closes, expected on or about 30 November 2027. On its second-quarter 2026 earnings call, SpaceX said it expects to win customers from the three largest U.S. carriers, with service starting at the end of 2027.

Capacity and demand both hold growth back, and the base case depends on next-generation capacity arriving in 2027 and 2028; a one-year delay would lower 2030 revenue. The published estimates for 2025 do not count the same things: the two highest include laptops and tablets among devices and Ku- and Ka-band links, while the lowest names neither.

The report sizes the named operators’ D2D revenue from their own filings and treats other providers, which disclose none, as an assumption. Most of the 2025 estimate rests on one inference: that the mobile connectivity business in SpaceX’s registration statement is Starlink Mobile. The report maps spectrum holdings and wholesale agreements, segments the market by revenue channel, geography and service type, and sets out conservative, base and optimistic scenarios to 2030. The full analysis is on the report’s page: Satellite Direct-to-Device Market Forecast to 2030.