Good day, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the AST SpaceMobile First Quarter 2022 business update call. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Scott Wisniewski, Chief Strategy Officer of AST SpaceMobile. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Let me refer you to slide two of the presentation, which contains our safe harbor disclaimer. During today's call, we may make certain forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions, and as a result, are subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause actual events to differ materially from the forward-looking statements on this call.
For more information about these risks and uncertainties, please refer to the Risk Factors section of AST SpaceMobile's annual report on Form 10-K for the year that ended December 31, 2021 with the Securities and Exchange Commission and other documents filed by AST SpaceMobile with the SEC from time to time. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements, and the company specifically disclaims any obligation to update the forward-looking statements that may be discussed on this call.
Also, after our initial remarks, we will be starting our Q&A section with questions submitted in advance by our shareholders. With that, I would like to introduce Chairman and CEO, Abel Avellan, and our new Chief Financial Officer, Sean Wallace, to the call as well. Abel, over to you.
Thank you, Scott. For those of you who may be new to our company, I want to take a few minutes to explain our mission and what we're doing. AST SpaceMobile is building the first and only global cellular broadband network in space to operate directly with standard unmodified mobile devices based on our extensive IP and patent portfolio.
Our engineers and space scientists are on a mission to eliminate the connectivity gaps faced by today's five billion mobile subscribers and finally bring broadband to the billions who remain unconnected. We believe this to be a very large opportunity and allow us to participate in the $1 trillion annual wireless service market. While it has been only a short six weeks since our last public update, we have made strong progress, and I would like to take you through that now.
Turning to slide four, technology and industrialization update. We're on target for our planned BlueWalker 3 summer launch. In preparation for this milestone, we have completed over 700 BlueWalker 3 tests to date. Once in orbit, we're expected to test cellular broadband globally with participating cellular operators in the U.S., Japan, Europe, Africa, South America, and Asia.
This effort will be supported by ground control centers in Maryland, Colorado, and Australia that are being readied to support BlueWalker 3 post-launch operations. We're also putting in place ground stations and approvals to support the planned BlueWalker 3 summer launch, including the FCC experimental license, which was recently granted by the FCC. We are on target for the completion during 2022 of our expansion production facility site two in Texas to support our target of up to six satellites per month.
We had increased to more than 2,300 patent and patent pending claims supporting a strong and expanding competitive advantage. Turning to slide five, business update. We have successfully added a new MOU with Globe Telecom, an operator in Philippines with 86.8 million subscribers. With them, we have now more than 1.8 billion subscribers represented by mobile network operators with whom we have agreements and MOUs.
We recently received an FCC experimental license for BlueWalker 3 space to ground testing in the United States using 3GPP low-band cellular spectrum and Q/V-band frequencies. Also recently, we had added a $75 million committed equity facility with B. Riley that provides AST with the right but not the obligation to raise equity capital over the next 24 months.
Before I hand it off, I wanted to thank our retiring CFO, Tom Severson, for all his time and effort building AST SpaceMobile over the last five years. We have worked over the last six months to find the best partner for the next phase of growth to the company. I'm now happy to introduce Sean Wallace, our incoming Chief Financial Officer. He brings to the team deep telecom, financial, and capital market experience to be added to the team to support our future growth. With that, let me transfer to Sean now.
Thanks, Abel. Sorry about that. Good afternoon, everyone. I wanted to share my excitement about joining the AST team. As an experienced telecom CFO and banker, the work I did to understand the AST story continually led me to conclude that this project, given its global ambitions, has the potential of making a large and profound impact on the world's connectivity ecosystem by solving what is probably the most critical problem facing the mobile industry today, providing global cellular broadband coverage directly to standard unmodified mobile phones.
In support of this ambitious plan, I met a strong and innovative management team that has attracted a deep bench of talent. I was comforted by the significant strategic sponsorship of leading telecom companies such as Vodafone, American Tower, and Rakuten.
I was impressed by how quickly this team has developed relationships with leading MNOs across the globe that have more than 1.8 billion subscribers in total. As we have discussed today on this call, I have to congratulate the team on its continued progress towards meeting important milestones, which indicates a strong execution capability.
I want to provide an update on a series of activities that the company has been focused on and highlight some of the liquidity and financial metrics for the first quarter. As we have stated before, a key innovation proposed by AST is the development of an industrialized procurement and manufacturing process for our planned satellite fleet. Historically, satellites have been manufactured one at a time in job shop facilities.
AST is developing a state-of-the-art assembly line process designed to enable AST to scale the procurement of parts, lower assembly costs, and materially speed up the volume of production. These efforts are expected to enable AST to lower the cost of its satellites and enable the company to meet its goal of ultimately building up to 6 satellites per month.
As part of this goal, I would like to highlight some of the activities the team has accomplished during the first quarter. First, AST has made progress in reconfiguring its new Texas AIT facility designed to house the satellite assembly and test line. The company has retrofitted and remodeled the facility, built a clean room for critical assembly processes, and the facility is now ready to house and support inventory for manufacturing as well as the assembly and testing line.
Our efforts to integrate an ERP system to support our inventory management and manufacturing process continues apace, and we believe that the entire system will go live during the second half of this year. Just as importantly, we continue to hire experienced leadership and make human capital investments across all functions and offices.
Let me discuss some of the highlights regarding our liquidity and expenditures. We ended the first quarter with $255.1 million in cash. We believe this cash is sufficient to support our cash expenditures for more than the next 12 months. As you saw from our recent announcement regarding our B. Riley committed equity facility, we continue to evaluate a variety of capital-raising efforts to extend the runway of our liquidity.
We are focused on exploring a wide range of options and remain confident that we have a broad set of funding opportunities. For the first quarter, we had GAAP operating expenses of $32.7 million versus $31.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2021, including non-cash operating expenses of $3.4 million and $2.7 million, respectively.
We expect to continue to expand that level for the next several quarters. The $1.4 million increase in cost during the first quarter was related to increased employee costs and other research and development and engineering expenses as we ramp up the development and infrastructure investments to support the BlueBird-1 program.
For the first quarter, we made capital expenditures of $21.6 million, which includes a payment to SpaceX for BlueWalker 3 technical adjustments in connection with the previously disclosed SpaceX multi-launch services agreement. As mentioned earlier, we have substantially completed assembly and testing for BlueWalker 3 and are turning our investments towards the production of our BlueBird satellites. With that, I'll turn it back to Scott.
Thanks, Sean. Before we go to the queue of analyst questions, we'd like to address a few of the questions submitted ahead of the call by our investors. Operator, could you please start us off with the first question?
Thank you. Brian from Toronto asks, "When will you know definitively that the technology actually works from space?
Thank you, Bryan, for the question. After we launch, we expect within an hour or two to know if we were successful launch and put into the orbit that we are expecting. After that, we will wait for the right timing to basically deploy the satellite, which is basically open the satellite into its final configuration. That would be within a week or two after the launch.
That's obviously a major phase, and it's something that we will know within a week or two of the launch. After that, we go through a six-month process of testing with the operators. We have selected locations around the globe in the U.S., Europe, Africa, South America, and Asia, including Japan. We'll be doing testing with the selected telecom partners.
Thank you. Christopher from Florida asks, "If BW 3 fails, will BB 1 serve as the next test satellite to continue optimizing the new system? If not, then how long would you expect it to take to build and launch another test satellite?
Thank you, Chris, for the question. Well, first of all, we have built redundancy into BlueWalker 3 satellite across many of its systems, and we have conducted extensive testing to position the spacecraft to success in orbit. Our BlueBird program has been advancing alongside the build and test of BlueWalker 3.
We anticipate that our next launch after BlueWalker 3 will be a BlueBird satellite incorporating the many lessons and advancements that we learned during the build of BlueWalker 3. Our plan is that our production satellite phase will continue to advance with the launch of BlueBird satellites as currently planned, even in the event of any complication with BlueWalker 3, which we don't anticipate. The next satellite will be a BlueWalker 3, followed by a BB1.
Thank you. Rick from the Netherlands asks, "What is the desired situation to exercise the financing option? Is there a minimum stock price to exercise the deal? Can you elaborate more about the deal's terms?
Abel Avellan, why don't I take this?
Yeah.
The agreement.
Go ahead, Tom.
Thanks. The agreement with B. Riley provides us with access of up to $75 million of additional liquidity through a committed equity facility. It's accessible over 24 months. It gives us the right, but not the obligation, to sell and issue shares of our Class A common stock to B. Riley at a 3% discount to what's known as the volume-weighted average trading price for the performance measurement period.
This is a tried and true and extremely efficient way of raising incremental capital, and it's really in line with our strategy of maintaining regular and diverse access to various capital markets, while preserving our existing cash for building our BlueBird production satellites.
It's highly flexible, but I also, as I said earlier, we will continue to look at a variety of sources of capital, whether it's credit or equity from governmental financial institutions, commercial partners, as well as the equity debt and hybrid capital markets to continue to fund our plans going into the future.
Thank you. Terry from Georgia asks, "Do you have any plans to potentially transport multiple BlueBird satellites on a single launch?
Yeah, we have carefully planned our launch strategy together with the development of our satellites. For us, it's critical to be able to launch multiple satellites on a single launch. We have done so based on multiple launch vehicles, so in order to be launch agnostic, which allowed us to have access to multiple providers in order to give us flexibility.
We ramp up production, we expect that we will be using large launch vehicles that can support multiple BlueBird satellites. We are very encouraged by the many large launch vehicles that are coming into service from SpaceX and other launch providers.
Thank you. Steve from Arizona asks, "Supply chain problems have been creating havoc since the pandemic began. How resilient is your supply chain? How many critical components have only a single vendor available? Have you been stockpiling these components?
Yeah. Well, supply chain is obviously something very important. We are actively engaged with third-party vendors to secure our supply components and materials for BlueWalker satellites. We had agreements for all the major subsystems for the constellations.
We have, and we'll continue to invest in all the long lead items that we require for the system. We have also mitigate the risk of supply chains by using FPGAs and systems that are configurable and available now. We feel that we can continue to execute on our plan despite any potential supply chain issues.
Thank you. Steve from Arizona asks, "Are neon gas shortages caused by the Russian invasion of the Ukraine causing any concerns about semiconductor availability needed for the BlueBird builds?
Yes. I have said before we're basing our satellites based on an FPGA, which are basically configurable and flexible. We are not exposed to potential market shortage of semiconductors. The later BlueBird ones, which we're developing our own chips, will be based on using TSMC technology for our ASICs. The first BlueBird ones will be based on FPGA, the second will be based on our own ASIC, which is part of our own development.
Great. With that, I'd like to thank our shareholders for submitting these questions. Operator, let's open the call to analyst questions now.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press the pound key. Our first question comes from Bryan Kraft with Deutsche Bank. You may proceed.
Hi, good afternoon. I had a few. I guess first, in light of the deal with B. Riley, can you talk about the relative attractiveness of issuing equity versus the other capital-raising alternatives you have, and how you're thinking about the timing for raising capital given the rising rate environment?
I guess a little bit separately, if you could share any additional specificity around timing for the BlueWalker 3 launch. I know you said this summer. I was wondering if you could narrow that at all. Finally, what does the timing look like at this point for the BlueBird commercial satellite launches? Thank you.
Thanks, Brian. I'll take. You wanna take that?
Go ahead, Scott.
Brian, I guess I'll take the first question on the use of equity and the use of equity versus other capital. I think for us, as we said, you know, we have a diverse set of available sources of capital. I think at this stage, you know, we're eager to put a few of those in place, small pieces, equity and as Sean alluded to, other sources of capital too. For us, you know, this is a flexible tool. It's something we can use at our election, and it's something that, you know, we wanna use to make sure we can preserve our capital, you know, $255 million at quarter's end for BlueBirds.
I think this is a good thing to have in our back pocket, and we'll use it as we see fit, and other, you know, small pieces of capital this year are also available to us. The second question, I think, was on BlueWalker 3 timing specificity. I'll give a little bit of clarity on that.
I mean, the way to think about our timing, Brian, is the satellite needs to leave for the launch pad, you know, call it up to four weeks before we launch. You can go a little tighter, but that's how we think about our internal planning. As we work towards that, you know, the satellite's going through final testing, and we felt comfortable reaffirming our summer timeline.
We're not waiting on any parts or subsystems at this point. As we've talked about before, you know, we have contractual commitments with SpaceX on timing within a range, but final timing is always subject to various steps and considerations and, you know, changes can occur. For us, the process of managing that timeline is a very detailed, very technical launch checklist, and we are doing that as, you know, highest priority to the company right now.
For us, you know, we look forward to updating everybody in due course, but, you know, we reaffirm the summer timeline. The last question was on BlueBird timing. I'll jump in there. No change from our last call. You know, we're very focused on building and investing in our infrastructure.
Abel mentioned, you know, Site Two. You know, we're working towards the goal of getting those two facilities and their supply chain to deliver up to six satellites a month, and that's a goal that we have to achieve for 2023. For us, you know, we're racing towards that goal, and you know, our intent will be to ramp up to that level during 2023. Thereafter, you know, 2024 is a very important year to scale the constellation and achieve global coverage.
Thanks, Scott. When would we expect the first BlueBirds to be launched, actually?
We're starting construction of those this year, on top of the investment that we're making now, and we haven't announced yet in 2023 when we plan to launch our first one.
Okay. Okay, thanks very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Chris Quilty with Quilty Analytics. You may proceed.
Thanks, guys. Just wanted to clarify, I did not ask the Christopher from Florida question before. First question, as you roll out the testing on BlueBird, the BlueBird satellite, what do you have to invest in terms of CapEx, and what is the staging to build out the sort of gateway infrastructure for testing?
Chris, are you referring to gateways for BlueWalker 3 or gateway for the constellation?
Just for BlueWalker.
Okay. For BlueWalker, basically, we have three ground control centers, Maryland, Colorado, and Australia. Then we have approximately 20 gateway stations that are pretty much getting online as we speak, to basically get access to the spacecraft for telemetry control reasons.
Then, as you know, we recently got the FCC approval for our testing, so we have gateways here in Midland and in Hawaii, for accessing in United States our Q/V-band gateways. Also, we have been assigned for spectrum for our testing directly to the cell phones through the experimental license that we just got. All of that is on time for our planned launch this summer. It will be designed to basically test broadband capability directly to the handsets, using our next satellite launch.
Got it. Can you remind us as you move to the BlueBirds, who handles that ground station CapEx? Is that fronted by your partners, or is AST responsible for that spending?
Yeah, we had an agreement with American Tower for having carrier-neutral locations where we actually place the gateways. Typically, the gateways CapEx, the innovation, the core and interconnection of all of that, it is actually part of the agreement to be fulfilled by the operator. We do install the actual gateways, the antennas, typically in a carrier-neutral location, either owned by American Tower or owned by the operator itself.
Great. Can you remind us, how do you eventually migrate once you go through the experimental testing on both the gateway feeder links and obviously the user links to a fully operational FCC ITU-approved usage of the spectrum?
Yeah. Well, we have our filings on the ITU, and then as you know, every country provide their own approvals for the use of our spectrum or the use of the cellular operator spectrum. In the case of United States, we have the gateways that will be co-located in American Tower locations.
Those gateways, they are subject to their own license. They're using satellite spectrum, V-band and Q/V-band in order to connect from the gateways up to the satellite. We will work with our partner operator, with our partner cellular operator to use their spectrum in the area where they don't have their spectrum deployed. That's the basic setup.
That is what we have been doing very actively in many countries, starting with the country that will be first in operations. That seems to be a regulatory process that is working for us. We're very encouraged by the experimental license we got from the FCC, but we continue country by country, getting these grants for operations of our system.
Specific to the Q/V-band gateway feeder links, that's a relatively new deployment. I think EchoStar is also using that on their Jupiter 3. What have you done in terms of testing, either ground testing or on-orbit satellite testing to ensure you know the strength of those feeder links?
Yeah. Just to put it in context, I mean, these feeder links are for the gateways. In the United States, you need two, three for redundancy, to add redundancy. The coverage area of these links are very, very small, within a few kilometers or so. They are basically designed where you place your gateways, and then you get universal coverage through the cellular spectrum.
This band is very attractive and because of the amount of capacity that it has. It allows us to group a significant amount of cellular spectrum into the gateways where we interconnect to the cellular operators. We have actual installations of these type of gateways already. We have the equipment that we have procured to basically access this spectrum, and we will continue testing them with the launch of BlueWalker 3 and with the experimental license that we got from the FCC.
Thank you. Just if I can, one final question. Due to the Ukraine war, there's been a bit of a shortage of access to Antonov aircraft, which are typically used to transport satellites. Were you planning on using air transport or, given your location in Texas, were you already planning on using ground transport for the satellites?
No. We're planning to use ground transportation. The container for BlueWalker 3 is actually already built. We will be taking from Midland to Cape Canaveral. It will be one and a half day trip. We are also in contact with the city to bring train rails into the facility. We plan to connect it to the train system as we get towards our six satellites per month capability. At the beginning, our baseline launch are based on U.S. launches and we plan to use ground transportation for that.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Andres Coello with Scotiabank. You may proceed with your question.
Yes. Thank you very much. I'm wondering if you could comment on how your MOUs with wireless carriers all over the world will actually translate into a business opportunity once all the testing is over, if everything goes well. How did you translate the MOUs, for example, in Latin America with Millicom, Telefónica and other players? How do you translate them into a business opportunity? Or put it differently, if those MOUs imply an obligation by the wireless carrier to actually start working with you, just any comment around the MOUs? Thank you.
Yeah. Okay. Well, the terms of the MOUs vary partner by partner, participating MNO by participating MNO. By and large, they're basically based on a revenue share, where we share the revenue that is being generated by our service inside the operator's network. The operator retain the retail capability.
They market, and they sell the service. They advertise the service either through sending a text message to the user when the user get out of coverage or by other means in the retail capability. They provide the spectrum, we provide the network, and based on that, there is a split on the revenue that is generated by that.
When we count number of subs that we can access through the MOUs, when we say we have access to around 1.8 billion subscribers, what we're referring to is that the operators which we have agreements or MOUs, they do have 1.8 billion subscribers, and that's given that those subscribers become accessible to us through this revenue share agreement.
Then there's a retail pricing that gets agreed between us between the operators ourselves. That it depends on what the kind of service is. If it's wherever you go plan, wherever you're located, you get a service through SpaceMobile, that service gets priced at a retail basis based on the country and other factors.
You have also the services that are targeted to serve people that live and work in places where there's no connectivity all the time. The fundamental is 90% of the earth surface do not have cellular broadband. Within that 90% of the earth surface, you have half of the world population that do not have cellular broadband, and you have three-quarters of a billion people approximately without nothing. That's how we capitalize these agreements with our MNO through our technology.
Thank you. Just to clarify, if the testing is successful, the MOUs create an obligation by the carrier to start using your services or is the understanding it's just optional? I mean, once you deliver the positive testing, then once you have your constellation ready, is there a clear commitment towards working with you, or can they still pull out?
Sure. I'll take this one. Our commitments and our agreements and MOUs vary. Some of them are binding agreements, but some of them are not. The purpose of these agreements, of course, is to align interests. We've been signing these since 2018, and to ensure that, you know, they participate in the development of the technology and regulatory approvals and also thinking through the business side as Abel took us through.
At this point, though, you know, as we get closer to launching service in each country, there will be definitive commercial agreements put in place, typical for the telecom industry. Those are not ones that you sign years in advance. They don't generate good terms for the seller of the capacity in that case.
We have, you know, some agreements that are binding, and the others are MOUs. Those are agreements that we want to make into more definitive commercial agreements with, you know, clear pricing levels, and clear SLAs, among other terms. That is a next step before we launch commercial service in any given country.
Thank you very much. Very clear.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Landon Park with Morgan Stanley. You may proceed.
Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking the questions. I was wondering if we could start out just in terms of the opportunities that you guys see ahead. How are you guys thinking about the non-consumer market in terms of, you know, the opportunity there, whether it's on the government military side or the enterprise side? You know, what type of role do you think you can play in those markets? You know, do you also expect to be eligible to potentially receive any funding from the BEAD program here in the U.S.?
Okay. Well, we obviously see that a significant number of other opportunities besides the consumer opportunity. However, we believe that the largest opportunity is the 5 billion people that move in and out of connectivity every day and the three-quarter of a billion people that live and work in places where there's nothing.
Having said that, there is IoT, defense, and other type of opportunities that are going to be available to us. Obviously providing universal connectivity in countries, in whole continents, in areas where there is not any other means of connectivity directly to handsets, a very large opportunity that goes beyond the consumer opportunity.
To your question, yes, we plan to participate in the process from the FCC. As it relates to extending 5G universally in the United States, we do believe that that's an important for the country. There is a lot of political will to make sure that every citizen get connectivity, regardless where they live or work, both on a fixed type of connections and more into what we do, which is on a wireless cellular connection. Yeah, we do have plan to connect. All our models are primarily based on the retail consumer opportunity. But of course, there is many other verticals that we will be able to tap as we develop our network.
Just to follow up on that. Are there any particular use cases that stand out to you as particularly attractive within the government and enterprise markets? Is there any, you know, do you think that some of those markets would offer a higher yield on your capacity against the consumer market, or how are you thinking about that?
Yeah. It's Scott here. You know, as Abel said, you know, it's a little unique for a satellite company to be going after this new market, right? The wireless market. It's a very large market relative to legacy satellite opportunities, even if some of those opportunities are nice. We really like the mass market opportunity. It's one that our MNO partners are really keyed towards.
Many of our MNO partners are also very good at those other verticals you're talking about. They're developing IoT, government, enterprise, depending on the company and depending on the region. There are opportunities that are really strong. We've intentionally not highlighted, you know, which ones might be best because we wanna focus on the mass market opportunity.
Interest is strong there. You know, we get inbounds on resiliency, obviously, emergency backup. Of course, you know, the fact that our network functions without a terminal remains a real cornerstone of a lot of the interest and inbound interest we get even outside of the mass market opportunity.
Great. Thanks for that color. Moving on to, you know, just some follow-ups on the questions regarding the feeder links. How many feeder links will each satellite have, and what is the channel sort of size in terms of gigahertz for those feeder links?
Yeah. We have per satellite up to four feeder links. Each feeder link is around 10 gigahertz per polarization. We have two polarizations per antenna on the spacecraft, and then they connect down to the gateways in country. Typically, depending on the size of the country, we have between two or three gateways or locations where we bring down those feeder links into the core network of the operators.
It's up to four links of 10 gigahertz and two polarization. What type of modulation, link-level do you think you can do in your feeder links?
Well, the way that the system is designed is basically to be a transparent beamformer. So basically the same modulations that we have coming from the phone up to the spacecraft, and then translated into frequency to bring it down to the gateway. So all the classical modulation that you will see on the downlink from the spacecraft to the phone and from the phone to the spacecraft. So there is actually it's a bent pipe. It's the same modulation that you get on the UE.
Oh, yeah. I'm just wondering what. So what is that modulation or how, what is the spectral efficiency you're expecting?
Yeah.
I guess is my question.
Right. It's depends on many factors, but it's somewhere in the downlink between 3-6 bits per hertz and between 1.5-2 bits per hertz on the uplink.
Great. That's the uplink being the feeder link, you're saying?
The uplink is from the phone into the spacecraft.
Okay, great. Thank you. On the BlueBird program, I don't know if you reiterated the expense guidance up top. You know, given the expense issues we've seen in other parts of the industry, what gives you the confidence that you're not gonna see, you know, some amount of inflation come through over time? Do you think that there's any reasonable risk of that occurring over the next 12-24 months?
Well, first of all, I mean, for our technology, we are highly vertically integrated. We have control of almost every component that is in the spacecraft, from reaction wheels, magnetorquers, flight computers, the micro itself, which is a self-contained system, solar panels.
We are as vertically integrated as we think makes sense in order to keep costs and control of the cost. Our cost at this point is very well known, not only with the build of BlueWalker 3, but this is substantial advancement that we have, and the agreement that we had in place for the provisioning of parts for the constellation. On the last call, we reiterate our cost basis for the BlueWalker satellites. We see no change on those at this point.
Is there any significant risk in your mind to the upside over the next year or you feel quite confident in those expense numbers?
We feel quite confident, given where we are on the procurement phase of those parts.
Great. Sean, just one last question for you. Can you just go more into, you know, what attracted you to the company and perhaps any, you know, sort of diligence that you did on your side to get comfortable with the opportunity that the company's discussed?
I mean, I think I gave an overview. I mean, it's tough to do this over a call, but I have extensive contacts in the industry as a banker for quite a long time, so I did a lot of industry checks, was able to talk with industry experts who'd either been in the industry or analyzed the industry. I spent time with a number of wireless operators who knew about the project and, you know, it was a variety of market, technology, regulatory, and getting to know the team and understanding it.
You know, as I see it, in my career, I saw almost 10 or 15 different projects that tried to do something similar, but always had a challenge of a very expensive and custom customer equipment to take the downlink from the satellite.
This is an incredibly exciting opportunity to do something where you'll be able to go after the entire cellular market and continue to help the three billion people around the world who don't have that gap. A lot of work and discussions with industry people, regulatory et cetera, made me very comfortable. It's an exciting opportunity.
Great. Thanks very much for that color. Thanks for taking the questions.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one on your telephone. Our next question comes from Griffin Boss with B. Riley Securities. You may proceed.
Hey, thanks for taking my question. You get on competition. Lynk is really the only other player out there at the moment, at least that I know of. I understand it's a very large market, but are you seeing them in the market at all, or have they come up in your conversations with MNOs?
Just any color you could provide on that front. Then similarly, on the MNO front, I believe you've said your partnership with Vodafone includes five-year exclusivity. I was just curious, could you remind me, does that exclusivity timeline begin when commercial service starts?
Sure. Hi, Griffin, I'll take that. Second one first, with Vodafone, you're correct that the five-year mutual exclusivity in their 24 different markets around the world, that starts at service initiation. It was signed, you know, years ago, but it, that five-year period starts with service initiation. In terms of other players that we run into, you know, we don't really run into other players at this time.
I think we've had success building the relationships with the mobile network operators from, you know, the early stages of the company. It's an opportunity, like Sean highlighted, that is really differentiated. The mobile network operators who have many of them have bad experiences with satellites historically, you know, saw this as solving a lot of the problems of the past.
It's one that's always resonated well, and you can see that in the success we've had adding, you know, more and more mobile network operators over the last few months, some of whom have over 100 or multiple hundreds of subscribers under their belt today. I think our opportunity resonates very well.
I think, as we approach our summer launch and plan for our constellation next year and the year after, you know, the volume with the mobile network operators is growing, and that's really exciting to see. We don't, you know, when we're working with the mobile network operators or thinking about the opportunity, it's not really one that they're benchmarking against anyone else at this time.
Got it. All right. Thanks, Scott. That's really helpful. Sort of sticking to the MNOs, and, you know, jumping back a little bit in time here, I know Verizon and T-Mobile had both filed petitions back at the end of 2020, I think November of 2020 it was, to the FCC to deny, you know, the AST service.
To the extent you guys can speak about, you know, ongoing conversations or anything like that, have you had any progress with either of those two MNOs since then? I mean, obviously, you guys have come to numerous agreements with other MNOs since then. I didn't know if that, you know, more so validated the service to them, and if you guys had sort of struck up conversations again at all.
Sure. I think, you know, the filings around the FCC docket were not unexpected, you know, more than a year ago now, you know, where folks typically, you know, lay out their positions relative to where they sit in the market. You know, we think the U.S. market supports multiple providers for us, for sure.
That's something that we'd wanna approach. We've not announced any conversations with any of those U.S. providers. I think our solution fits really well. The U.S. market in particular is very interesting for our solution given the nature of the country and the distribution of coverage today. I think the big three all certainly have a need for our solve.
Got it. Okay. That's great. Thanks a lot for that. Then just one more quick one for me. I know Sean mentioned earlier that you were substantially completed with the BW3 investment. I know on the last business update call, you said we should assume, you know, a little more than $80 million of overall investment in that.
I just wanted to make sure I understood correctly. When you say you're substantially completed with that investment, does that mean as of right now or at the end of Q1? I'm just trying to get a better sense of whether we should assume any additional investment for BW3 in Q2 at all.
That was referring to as of today.
As of today. Okay. Thanks a lot. Cool. That's it for me, guys.
Thank you. At this time, I'm showing no further questions. I would now like to turn the call back over to management for closing remarks.
Great. Thank you, operator. Our company is building a space-based cellular broadband network designed for use of the phone in your pocket today. I wanna thank everyone for joining, both the shareholders and the research analysts for their questions, and I hope everyone has a great rest of the week.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.