Vodafone UK Says Space 5G Mobile Service Still on Track for Early 2027 Beta

The CEO of Vodafone Group, Margherita Della Valle, has stated that their joint plan with AST SpaceMobile (aka – Satellite Connect Europe) to launch a space-based 4G and 5G mobile (mobile broadband) service to connect regular Smartphones is still expected to enter its “beta” testing phase “at the beginning of 2027“. Despite suffering an earlier launch failure.

Regular readers may recall that an orbital launch of a related BlueBird 7 satellite in April 2026 went wrong (here) after the New Glenn rocket, which is a heavy-lift orbital rocket developed by Blue Origin (owned by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos who has rival plans), ended up placing ASTSM’s new satellite into the wrong orbit.

AST is in the process of launching a total of 100 satellites (BlueBirds) over the next few years to support their Space Mobile service. AST already has about 6 active satellites in a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and they were originally aiming to reach 45–60 satellites launched by the end of 2026, which should be enough to deliver continuous coverage across the USA and select markets like the UK.

The next planned launch will see a further three satellites – BlueBird 11, 12, and 13 – being lofted into orbit on Wednesday, August 5th, 2026, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket (ironically another rocket company that also has a competing satellite mobile network via Starlink).

Margherita Della Valle, Vodafone Group CEO, said:

“Our partner AST is currently predicting, after the last replanning, that we will have available 45 satellites at the beginning of 2027. This is the number that we need to start our beta testing in the UK, which will be the first market where we launch.”

The BlueBird satellites are an evolution of AST’s original prototype 1.5-ton BlueWalker 3 (here) satellite, which orbits at an altitude of a little over 500km and features a huge 693-square-foot (64.4-square-meter) phased array antenna (here). The satellite was specifically designed for sending and receiving mobile signals between the space-based platform and regular mobile handsets – Direct-to-Device (DtD or D2D). But it has raised concerns over its brightness causing problems for astronomy, which is rapidly becoming quite a hot topic (here).

So far the only Direct-to-Device mobile service to launch commercially in the UK has been O2 Satellite via Starlink, which costs just £3 extra (monthly) for existing mobile customers to add on to their plans. Vodafone will need to either offer a significantly better service or be price competitive with that.