Elon Musk's SpaceX just made a huge play to challenge the phone industry and stocks like AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon are getting crushed

Elon Musk's SpaceX just made a huge play to challenge the phone industry and stocks like AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon are getting crushed

Elon Musk's SpaceX (SPCX) just sent a big message to the wireless industry.

We want our piece of the subscriber pie.

Late Thursday, SpaceX said it will acquire a nationwide low-band spectrum portfolio. It positions Musk's satellite business Starlink to challenge legacy wireless giants across the US.

Shares of AT&T (T), T-Mobile (TMUS) and Verizon (VZ) were crushed in afterhours trading on the news.

Concerns had already escalated across Wall Street that Starlink could disrupt legacy wireless operators like AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile by transitioning from a rural broadband service into a direct mobile competitor.

Following its strategic acquisition of terrestrial spectrum and rapid deployment of advanced satellites, SpaceX had laid the groundwork to launch its own standalone cellular network alongside its direct-to-cell capabilities.

The expansion threatens traditional carriers' high-margin enterprise, emergency service, and rural subscriber bases, as well as lucrative international roaming revenues.

AT&T CEO John Stankey has taken notice of Starlink's moves, but hasn't lost sleep over it…yet.

"I think they're going to find places where they clearly have a good solution," Stankey told Yahoo Finance at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference in September. "In airlines and flights today, they have a fantastic broadband solution. In rural parts or territories, it's a very efficient way to get good bandwidth to people. I think we see that there's going to be some IoT-type applications, like connecting vehicles that are largely outdoors and maybe have line of sight to the sky, that they're going to have an opportunity to go in and do some things there that maybe we haven't done as effectively."

So, while Starlink will present competition, Stankey added, "there's also going to be the complementary dynamic of us being able to solve that other 2% of the use cases I talked about and bring our customers to those satellite operators, whether it be Amazon or SpaceX. They'll be the beneficiary of us aggregating that traffic and bringing it into the wholesale market to be able to be used."

Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance's Executive Editor, host of the Sozzi Unleashed morning show, the 'Power Players With Brian Sozzi' podcast and a member of Yahoo Finance's editorial leadership team. Follow Sozzi on X @BrianSozzi, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Tips on stories? Email brian.sozzi@yahoofinance.com.