Ast Spacemobile concludes a key agreement with Verizon in a context of increasing competition with SpaceX and T-Mobile

AST Spacemobile has signed a new agreement with Verizon to introduce high spatial cellular broadband through the United States, marking its most important partnership to date and its latest initiative aimed at conquering a larger share of the emerging cell space.

Under the terms of the agreement, Verizon will integrate the AST satellite network into its terrestrial infrastructure, using the 850 MHz spectrum from Verizon to extend the coverage in the remote areas that the towers cannot reach. The terms of the agreement have not been disclosed.

The agreement is based on a previous partnership between the two entities announced last year, in which Verizon is committed to paying $ 100 million to support the deployment of the AST service.

Verizon is the second major operator to sign with AST, after a 10 -year agreement with Vodafone. For AST, the agreement with Verizon comes at a critical time while the company hastened to deploy its constellation of BlueBird satellites designed to connect directly to unmatched mobile phones.

Currently, the company has successfully placed its first five Bluebird satellites in low terrestrial orbit, a first “block 1” intended to provide “intermittent” coverage across the United States. Meanwhile, ATT assembles the next generation of satellites – “Bloc 2” – with plans to deploy between 45 and 60 satellites by 2026.

The partnership also underlines the speed with which the satellite market with the cell is evolving. SpaceX, via its Starlink network, has already started to deploy its direct communication service with T-Mobile and recently strengthened its ambitions by agreeing to acquire for 17 billion dollars of wireless spectrum from Echostar.

AST has already demonstrated 4G and 5G connections between its satellites and smartphones, including vocal and video calls, testing stages which, according to the company, have “proven the capacities” of its network. But it remains to take up the challenge of developing this technology so that it serves millions of users.

AST shares jumped more than 15 % on Wednesday after the announcement of the agreement.