Week of July 21–26, 2025Telecom Intelligence: Week of July 21, 2025
Satellite-to-phone service stopped being a beta this week. On July 23 T-Mobile commercially launched T-Satellite, its Starlink-powered direct-to-cell service, making the US the first major market with broadly available satellite messaging built into a carrier plan, and opened it to rival carriers' customers for ten dollars a month. One day later, Starlink suffered a rare global outage lasting more than two hours, a jarring reminder that the space layer has single points of failure. The same week delivered second quarter earnings from all three national carriers, with T-Mobile posting its best-ever Q2 postpaid growth, Verizon raising full-year guidance, and AT&T beating on wireless while fiber softness drew scrutiny.