Starlink picks Qualcomm chips to power future 5G Mobile network

SpaceX has today revealed that Starlink’s plans for launching their own satellite-based nationwide 5G mobile broadband and calls network, which will initially launch in the USA, is to be powered by Qualcomm’s Dragonwing Cellular Infrastructure solutions (i.e. the chips they intend to use in their terrestrial base stations).

At present Starlink has an overall total of c.11,190 satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) for both broadband and roaming mobile services – mostly at altitudes of between c.340-550km. Residential users in the UK previously paid from £40 a month for the 100Mbps unlimited data plan, which also promises uploads of c.15-35Mbps and low latency connectivity (sub-50ms). But currently you can only buy their Direct to Cell (DtC) mobile service in the UK via O2 Satellite for £3 extra per month.

However, Starlink also appear to be proceeding with plans to develop and launch their own in-house Starlink Mobile service – potentially placing them in direct competition with some of their D2D mobile operator partners (e.g. O2 in the UK). This plan partly involves deploying 5G Small Cells alongside their existing broadband routers and other kit, although they’ll need to do much more than that to achieve good signal coverage indoors as well as outdoors for everybody.

Despite some huge technical and coverage challenges, Qualcomm has today confirmed that Starlink Mobile will harness their Dragonwing QRU100 and QDU100 platforms and commercial-grade Layer 1 software. This is a network that will combine high-capacity Massive MIMO radio and baseband technology with power-efficient processing to support cellular base station deployment at scale.

The announcement states that Starlink Mobile will use Massive MIMO radio units with 64 transmit and 64 receive paths, or 64T64R, designed to improve coverage, capacity and spectral efficiency. The Qualcomm Dragonwing QRU100 platform provides integrated processing for Massive MIMO radio units, while the QDU100 platform delivers high-performance, efficient Layer 1 processing.

“We’ve designed these platforms with efficiency in mind, improving performance per watt across radio and distributed-unit processing to help improve network deployment economics at scale. SpaceX plans for U.S. nationwide deployment to begin in 2027, with tens of thousands of sites planned over the multi-year agreement,” said Qualcomm. “And we’re looking beyond 5G. The collaboration also represents a commercial step toward SpaceX and Qualcomm’s broader vision for AI-native 6G infrastructure.”