AST-Vodafone venture files ITU plan for 344 satellites
What happened
SatCo, the Vodafone-AST SpaceMobile joint venture, filed an ITU coordination request through Germany on 24 September for a 344-satellite direct-to-device network. The filing's own record names the filer "SATCO," matching the joint venture Vodafone and AST announced in November to run service across Europe from a German operations hub. Its bands include the 1980-2010MHz/2170-2200MHz pair the EU is fighting over in its own 2 GHz MSS allocation, plus 800MHz and 2.5GHz cellular bands. Neither company has previously disclosed a satellite count for this network.
Read-across for SES
This is AST's European sovereign D2D architecture taking concrete regulatory form in the same market SES's Elveo stake competes in. Two of the filed bands sit inside the exact 2 GHz range the EU is allocating under COM(2026)311, a national filing that could complicate that pooled process. It sharpens the competitive clock on Elveo's own spectrum and manufacturing commitments.
As the brief filed it
[AGE: 9h] AST SpaceMobile's Vodafone joint venture, SatCo, filed an ITU coordination request through Germany for a 344-satellite BlueBird network. It is the first public satellite count for the European direct-to-device constellation the partners announced last November.