AST SpaceMobile agreed a deal to buy S-band spectrum rights held under the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for $64.5 million, a move positioned as aiding its global ambitions.

The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2025 and will provide AST SpaceMobile with access to an additional 60MHz of mid-band spectrum.

AST SpaceMobile chair and CEO Abel Avellan said the company’s ASICs are “designed with S-band capabilities in mind”.

“With these new spectrum priority rights, we will be in a position to bring services in S-band to targeted markets around the world,” he explained.

AST SpaceMobile stated it entered into an agreement on 5 August “to acquire an entity that holds certain S-band ITU priority rights” for mobile satellite services.

Tim Farrar, president at TMF Associates, posted on X that in addition to not naming the entity it is buying the spectrum from, the deal is for priority rights and not actual operations.  

He also posted the spectrum rights appear to be related to a company called Sky and Space Global (SSG) which went public and then failed a few years ago.

“The new reported owner of SSG is a company called Elliosat which was set up earlier this year and is controlled by two people based in Texas, who are presumably undertaking this transaction with AST,” he stated.

The direct-to-device satellite player is headquartered in Midland, Texas.

He explained the rights are extremely old, as SSG launched its three satellites in 2017 and it is “far from clear this is worth anything, but $26M is cheap to distract from the delays”.

Farrar has a contentious relationship on X with AST SpaceMobile’s retail investors.