MDA Space blinked, and the contract vanished. One month, they’re holding a $1.8 billion CAD deal to build over 100 direct-to-device satellites. The next, Elon Musk’s SpaceX steps in, pockets EchoStar’s spectrum licenses, and takes over the whole operation. It wasn’t a bidding war. It wasn’t even a contest. It was a regulatory guilt-off where one company got a wrist slap and another got a kingdom.
EchoStar, once pretending it was a satellite operator, decided it would rather sell its precious U.S. spectrum to SpaceX for $17 billion USD than actually use it. That sale conveniently ends a pesky FCC investigation accusing EchoStar of hoarding spectrum like a toddler with toys they refuse to play with. Now that the licenses are in the hands of someone who will actually launch things, the feds can go back to their nap.
