Stock price is a heavy swallow here, especially if someone had a bad timing and not much patience, but stock price is a tool to get funding which AST has successfully done, a year ago with very bad conditions, a week ago with excellent conditions. Not sure what that tells, but to me it tells that at least someone has trusted them with a 1B in cash, and some others with billions in spectrum to achieve their idea which would be transformational.
What is fact is that where Starlink has gotten approval from FCC to test only text messages, AST has gotten approval to test full 5G broadband in Europe, Turkey and USA for now. Not sure how can I interpret it differently then that they have technical advantage and that they might be first to really provide useful commercial service, which they will start providing very soon.
Fact that AST is deSPAC has nothing to do with this. AST has gone out of that phase stellarly.
Second, technological advantages are very verified, by AST doing 20 Mbps download and 5G calls and extremely good spectral efficiency.
Definitely both architectures have pros and cons, but for the fixed-earth cells the bent-pipe is way more optimal then constant switching of the cell position which Starlink has.
ASTS has missed some deadlines, but they are not centering divs, they really do innovation from the first principles and that takes some time. Check TSLA which is 10 years into "we are getting FSD next year out"
Rakuten didn't hit them with the fine, but they exercised a contractual right to get 10 million dollar back if they don't deliver something, but same Rakuten is officially promoting the 2026 as start of the commercial coverage for Japan, if we are taking them as authority.
SpaceX is definitely not the only one on whom they depend for delivery since they use ISRO from India for the first satellite, Falcon9 for the next 8 and New Glen for the rest. And given that they have enough money, they can as well go back to more SpaceX if needed since they have agreement with them.
It is interesting that company without research team has so many patents on this technology and partners with Google, AT&T, Verizon, Vodafone, Rakuten, American Tower and that none of them is seeing how hoax they are. Maybe they will come here and get actually enlightened.
I see you don't understand the technological advantage AST has in comparison with Starlink Direct-To-Cell connection. They are some years ahead in this game.
AST is already testing full broadband 5G technology fully integrated into the terrestrial networks without interference with Vodafone and AT&T and will get Verizon beta testing approval very soon.
What Starlink D2C currently has is a spotty text service with such a low signal strength that is useless for anything more. That is what they got approval for from FCC because any stronger signal is causing unacceptable interference with the current terrestrial networks and the terrestrial providers didn't agree to allow them more than that. It will take a year or two at least for Starlink to get to provide more than text and that is actually stated as well in the T-Mobile press release about this.
Other thing is difference in AST and Starlink architecture which makes Starlink not easy to properly integrate in the terrestrial networks since they have gNodeB modules on the satellite, where AST is integrating with the gNodeB modules on the ground.
There are many details that make AST leading in the game of direct-to-cell communication in comparison to other solutions. They just got 1B in cash from investors to expand and speed up deployment of their network, so calling them vaporware might not age well when in couple weeks they start releasing the testing results.
What is fact is that where Starlink has gotten approval from FCC to test only text messages, AST has gotten approval to test full 5G broadband in Europe, Turkey and USA for now. Not sure how can I interpret it differently then that they have technical advantage and that they might be first to really provide useful commercial service, which they will start providing very soon.