An intriguing idea been floated around by Defence news expert Larry Ramer, suggesting that Amazon should buy — or make a considerable investment — in AST SpaceMobile. Ramer explained: “In light of the tremendous potential of AST’s technology, I also would not be surprised if AMZN eventually decides to buy AST for as much as $80 billion in a combination of cash and stock.”
An Amazon investment/acquisition would allow their Project Kuiper satellite broadband to leapfrog their own deployment of Kuiper satellites with — arguably — AST’s superior craft.
Moreover, AST has some extremely valuable contracts in hand, not least the Vodafone agreement and in particular the deal with Vodafone Idea (in India) as well as partnerships in place with AT&T and Verizon in the US.
Ramer reminds readers that, according to one report: “More than 2.5 billion people globally still lack internet access.” and that, “large swaths of the world’s population still don’t have access to mobile internet primarily because of affordability.” In Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Pakistan, for example, just 37 per cent, 34 per cent and 24 per cent of the citizens respectively have mobile internet.
Ramer also looks at the AST Board of Directors, and in particular AST Mexican board member Adriana Cisneros, whose Instagram account featured a picture of former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos with AST’s CEO, Abel Avellan, and Cisneros. In the wake of Cisneros’ post, Scotiabank analyst Andres Coello wrote: “Could Jeff Bezos become an ASTS investor? This is a possibility widely discussed by investors and analysts, in no small measure because Bezos is one of the world’s top space investors.”
The concept is that an Amazon stake in AST would guarantee access to AST’s satellites and its broadband technology. “These systems would likely enable Amazon to deploy its Project Kuiper initiative more quickly while greatly increasing the amount of revenue that it can generate,” suggests Ramer.
Another close observer talks about a more modest investment, of about percent by Amazon into AST. The prize for Amazon is access to the AST’s many telco partners of a direct 450 million AST-linked subscribers.
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