Verizon, T-Mobile take their rivalry to the skies (2025)

• The two carriers quibbled over T-Mobile’s messaging around its up-and-coming satellite services
• T-Mobile won that round, but Verizon's not backing down
• Verizon wants everyone to know it’s dead serious about satellite connectivity, announcing a first of its own this week

Verizon and T-Mobile are at it again, and this time, it’s more about what’s above their terrestrial networks than what’s on the ground.

To be sure, these two have been at each other’s throats for years, primarily because Verizon made areputation for itself as the carrier with the “best network” and T-Mobile, long known as a network laggard, set its sights on upending that. Lo and behold, 5G arrived and T-Mobile seized the moment to leapfrog its competitors, claim the5G network crown and rub it in with endlessthird-partyanalyses.

They both compete aggressively, but the jabs between T-Mobile and Verizon areespecially sharp. Now they’re increasingly ratcheting up the rhetoric when it comes to who offers what and when in terms of satellite-enabled services. It’s getting downright, dare we say, petty?

To wit: The National Advertising Division (NAD) of the BBB National Programs early Wednesday put out apress release announcing its decision to back T-Mobile’s claim that it’s the first and only wireless provider to partner with Starlink, the satellite service owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

The TL;DR version? NAD’s decision was made in response to a complaint filed by Verizon, which argued that T-Mobile’s online advertising conveys the message that T-Mobile is the “first and only” carrier to offer satellite-enabled messaging services on select devices, but it’s misleading because other carriers offer satellite-enabled messaging services. Verizon further argued that T-Mobile’s advertising is misleading because its satellite-enabled messaging services are in beta and not widely available to consumers.

T-Mobile responded that consumers understand that its ads are related to T-Mobile’s partnership with Starlink and aren’t misleading; they’re actually valid because T-Mobile is the first and only U.S. wireless provider to partner with Starlink on direct-to-device (D2D) communications via satellite.

In the end, NAD sided with T-Mobile, pointing to a Hal Poret survey that T-Mobile had submitted as part of its defense showing consumers don’t think T-Mobile is claiming to be the “first or only” provider to offer any type of satellite coverage, as Verizon contended. Rather, consumers understand that T-Mobile is only claiming it’s the first and only U.S. wireless provider hooking up with Starlink to expand mobile coverage.

Verizon's not done here

But it doesn’t end there. Less than an hour after the NAD decision went out, Verizon put out apress release announcing a “significant expansion” of its satellite texting capabilities, enabling its customers to become “the first in the U.S. to send text messages to any other customer device via satellite when outside the reach of terrestrial cellular networks using select Android devices from the series of Samsung Galaxy S25 and Google Pixel 9 smartphones.”

Basically, it means that now all Android customers with compatibledevices on Verizon’s network can text anyone while using satellite links instead of just reaching out for emergency services, according to a Verizon spokesperson. The service is free to Verizon customers who have qualifying devices and it’s enabled through Verizon’s partnership with Skylo.

So, T-Mobile apparently wins the argument about being first with a Starlink-based service. Verizon prevails in the texting race with select Android smartphones. And hey, while we know nit-picky details are super-duper important (what do you think we’ve been doing these last several decades?), we’re not at all sure where this is all going.

That’s why we asked TMF Associates analyst Tim Farrar for his take on all this.

“It’s all splitting hairs with these claims,” he said, reminding us that handset maker and marketer extraordinaire Apple was actuallythe first to offer a satellite service, powered by Globalstar, that allows regular SMS in addition to iMessage. There may be some constraints – Apple mentions that “not all carriers support SMS messaging via satellite, and some features may vary” on itssupport page, but it’s certainly a first.

What's EchoStar up to?

Farrar offered another explanation for the recent hoopla from the operators, which is the expectation of a forthcoming announcement from EchoStar. “Part of the motivation from both Verizon and T-Mobile may be to try and get ahead of that,” he said.

Indeed, speculation was high at the Satellite 2025 conference in Washington, D.C., last week around EchoStar potentially contracting for a low Earth orbit (LEO) direct-to-device (D2D) constellation from satellite manufacturer MDA Space. Such a service could provide broadband connectivity, a topic EchoStar President and CEO Hamid Akhavan talked about during the company’s Q4 conference call.

So far, we haven’t seen any news from EchoStar on this front, leaving us to read the tea leaves. The presumption is EchoStar would need a strategic partner to provide billions of dollars to fund a significant D2D project and Farrar said it’s hard to think of any possibilities for an EchoStar partner other than Apple.

Yet true to form, EchoStar Chairman Charlie Ergen is keeping his cards close to the vest and given his track record as a poker player, it’s entirely possible that it could just all be an enormous bluff, Farrar noted. Either way, we’ll be keeping an eye out for whatever’s in the cards.