Well, folks, we did it. The communications industry is saved again by the benevolent, fiercely competitive, and totally-not-government-coddled satellite sector. SES has officially been allowed to swallow Intelsat in a $3.1 billion move that’s being heralded as the biggest cosmic rebranding since Pluto got demoted.
Meanwhile, on that same piece of paper, T-Mobile bought some Midwest airwaves and metaphorically burned its DEI brochures in front of the FCC just to make sure Chairman Brendan Carr’s pen didn’t slip. And Metronet? It got folded into T-Mobile’s fiber family tree because someone needed to announce “fiber expansion” without having to mention actual network maps or broadband deserts.
But back to our main character: SES.
With this acquisition, SES now owns more satellite tonnage than most countries have weather balloons. It’s being described as a “multi-orbit behemoth,” which is industry-speak for “a company that can now stream 4K reruns of Friends from geostationary and medium-earth orbit simultaneously.”
What’s the big deal?
Apparently, consolidation is now synonymous with innovation. SES swears this merger means lower costs and better service, though no one asked how long you’ll wait for a satellite install if your Starlink dish falls off the roof in a thunderstorm.
Also conspicuously missing: any conditions from Team Telecom, the mysterious national security panel that usually shows up when foreign money is involved. Nothing to see here, folks, just handshakes, rubber stamps, and some very orbitally neutral paperwork.
The competitive landscape?
This is all one grand chess move against SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s Kuiper. In that light, SES is basically cosplaying as the scrappy underdog, except with hundreds of satellites, billions in funding, and decades of regulatory insulation. Elon launches rockets; SES launches mergers.
So while everyone is busy fawning over how T-Mobile’s new assets will “unlock” network synergies and expand fiber (or something), the SES-Intelsat saga quietly rewrote the balance of orbital power.
And did the FCC blink? Not unless it was in Morse code for “Please consolidate faster.”
