Amazon finally left the launchpad. On April 28 a ULA Atlas V carried the first 27 operational Project Kuiper satellites to orbit, the opening deployment of Amazon's 3,236-satellite answer to Starlink and the true start of the LEO broadband duopoly race, six years after the project was announced. The same day, the FCC's open meeting delivered a satellite-friendly rulemaking package, proposing to modernize licensing and squeeze more intensive use from spectrum allocated to space services. And EchoStar closed the week deepening its distress narrative, with filings and reports making clear the company viewed the FCC's gathering scrutiny as a threat to its ability to meet obligations, days before Chairman Carr's letters made the review official.
Earnings week drew the industry's new battle lines in ink. Verizon opened April 22 with record first-quarter EBITDA but a stinging loss of 289,000 postpaid phone subscribers, the price of its pricing discipline in a promotion-soaked market. T-Mobile closed the week reporting its best first quarter ever for postpaid additions, then spent its earnings call unveiling new Experience plans with a five-year price guarantee, weaponizing price certainty against rivals raising rates. In between, AT&T delivered steady wireless and fiber growth and became the first carrier to quantify tariff exposure in its guidance, telling investors it could absorb expected device cost increases without changing its outlook.
The tariff other shoe dropped, and SpaceX turned up the spectrum pressure. On April 14 the administration launched a Section 232 national security investigation into semiconductor and electronics imports, confirming that last week's smartphone exemption was a bridge to sector-specific tariffs rather than a reprieve. SpaceX chose the same day to escalate at the FCC, filing new data it said proved EchoStar barely uses its AWS-4 spectrum and renewing its demand for a sharing proceeding in the 2 GHz band. And the FCC teed up its April 28 open meeting with an agenda heavy on satellite modernization, previewing rules to streamline licensing and expand spectrum flexibility for the booming space economy.
Tariff week hit the phone in your pocket. The week opened with lines at Apple Stores as customers rushed to buy iPhones ahead of feared price hikes from the new reciprocal tariffs on Chinese imports, a rare moment of consumer panic buying in the device market. It closed with whiplash: late on April 11 the administration exempted smartphones, laptops, and chips from the steepest reciprocal tariffs, sparing the device supply chain, at least temporarily, from levies that could have added hundreds of dollars to flagship phones. In the background, EchoStar and SpaceX escalated their fight over the 2 GHz band at the FCC, with EchoStar blasting SpaceX's spectrum-sharing push as an anticompetitive attempt to crush its hybrid network before it matures.