By Andrew Bary

Starlink now is by far the most lucrative business within SpaceX, and the provider of satellite Internet services already is shaking up the telecom and cable industry.

The shares of Comcast, Charter Communications, AT&T and Verizon Communications have been under pressure lately due to the Starlink threat.

Powered by a network of 10,000 satellites, Starlink recently hit 12 million subscribers globally including about a quarter in the U.S.

Wolfe research analyst Peter Supino says Starlink could be a comet bearing down on broadband incumbents." For years, Starlink has been understood by Wall Street as a rural broadband solution, and unknown to most consumers.

Starlink has doubled its subscriber base annually in recent years and picked up key contracts from American and United airlines for broadband access for their airplane fleets.

Until recently, Starlink had been viewed by the U.S. telecom and cable industry as not a major threat to their franchises. The leading wireless and cable companies considered Starlink to be a niche product for rural areas without fiber or cable Internet connections.

But Wall Street now worries about Starlink taking market share from Comcast and Charter Communications, the two leading cable Internet providers, and AT&T and Verizon Communication, which offer Internet services via fiber. The cable companies are viewed as most at risk due their reliance on broadband for the bulk of their profits and their older networks.

Charter, Comcast, Verizon and AT&T shares are higher Friday because they are traditionally defensive stocks, but all four are off sharply in the past week.

Charter, which carries the most risk due to its high financial leverage, is down 9.5% in the last five sessions to $130.37; Comcast is off 4.7% to $23.70; Verizon is down 4.4% to $45.71; and AT&T has fallen 7.8% to $22.86.

"SpaceX will disrupt the $1.6T communications industry," wrote Oppenheimer analyst Tim Horan in a client note earlier this week. "This is the only major revenue to capture immediately."

Horan downgraded AT&T to Perform from Outperform earlier this week, writing that "broadband subscribers are at risk from satellite competition.

"For years, Starlink has been understood by Wall Street as a rural broadband solution, and unknown to most consumers," Supino wrote in a client note Friday. " No longer -- Starlink's advances in satellite technology and launch capacity have accelerated capacity growth and marketing investments."

SpaceX's connectivity segment, which is dominated by Starlink, generated more than 100% of SpaceX's Ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) in 2025 -- some $7.2 billion while the company as a whole did $6.5 billion.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said that Starlink's cost advantages as it deploys a new more powerful fleet of satellites could enable SpaceX ultimately to dominate both Internet and wireless services globally with an array of 100,000 satellites in low earth orbit that will allow fast connectivity for users.

"Satellite's advantage is geographic ubiquity at near-zero incremental infrastructure cost per home," Horan wrote. He sees Starlink hitting 15 million U.S. subscribers by 2030, up from 3 million currently. Ultimately, he thinks Starlink could support a billion subscribers globally.

Write to Andrew Bary at andrew.bary@barrons.com

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June 05, 2026 16:25 ET (20:25 GMT)

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