SpaceX is moving to become a phone company, and that is bad news for Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile — their stocks all dropped about 7% on the announcement.

• SpaceX is buying roughly $8 billion of nationwide low-band airwaves, on top of earlier spectrum deals worth far more.
• The part that spooked investors: service will come from satellites *and* from towers on the ground, filling dead zones inside buildings and cities.
• The big carriers only have ground networks, so they have no quick answer — their stock drops reflect lost future business, not today's.
• An informal poll found 86% of people would switch carriers if dead zones disappeared entirely.
• A Tesla-branded phone looks likely next, which would make Apple's thin product pipeline look worse.

Outlook: Expect Starlink phone service to launch first and a Tesla phone to follow, with the carriers losing ground before they can respond.