Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Sunday, September 14th.

Today on Forbes, SpaceX's $17 billion dollar Echo Star deal won't work without its

mega-rocket starship.

With two-thirds of the satellites currently in low orbit, SpaceX has become the king of the heavens,

overseeing a growing broadband internet empire

on the ground.

But when it comes to the nascent business of using satellites to connect to mobile phones

in remote areas beyond the reach of telecom towers, SpaceX has been far more constrained.

So far, it's been working with a narrow band of T-Mobile cellular spectrum in the U.S., only

able to relay text messages.

Billionaire Elon Musk's company took a step to break out in a big way last week, announcing

the purchase of a long, coveted chunk of spectrum from Echo Star that's perfect for beaming

signals to mobile phones from space.

The hefty price tag, $17 billion, makes it's SpaceX's largest acquisition by far.

The company touted that the spectrum it's buying will allow it to field new satellites that

provide 20 times the throughput and full 5G phone service, complete with video calls

from on top of any scenic mountain you want to climb.

But those promises come with a caveat.

Those new satellites appear to be designed to be launched by the giant rocket it's developing,

Starship.

Caleb Henry, an analyst with Coolty Space, said that if Starship

doesn't work as promised, that would be a giant monkey wrench. He said that SpaceX's direct-to-sell

...