Starlink, the satellite internet division of Space Exploration Technologies, could end up leasing space on at least 80,000 cell sites in the United States, making it a fourth large tenant for the country’s tower landlords, according to a preliminary analysis published on 30 October 2026 by Seeking Alpha. The analysis estimates the leases could add $1.13 to $3.54 of adjusted funds from operations (AFFO) per share at American Tower Corporation, one of the largest owners of cell towers in the United States.
The 80,000 figure is Seeking Alpha’s reading of Starlink’s public statements rather than a number SpaceX has set out itself: the analysis cites no filing, press release or quoted executive remark for it. The firmest material on the record comes from the other side of the table — American Tower’s third-quarter 2026 earnings call, where the company welcomed the prospect of a new large customer while declining to describe any negotiation.
One analysis, one source: the 80,000 sites, the lease-count splits and the AFFO range all originate in that single Seeking Alpha piece, which labels its own numbers preliminary. No rival analyst note, regulatory filing or independent dataset corroborates them; only American Tower’s reported tower counts and its executives’ quoted remarks are independently on the record.
Key facts
- American Tower held 41,764 US towers plus 250 in Canada as of the second quarter of 2026, figures drawn from its own quarterly reporting; the Canadian sites have since been sold.
- Those US and Canada towers generated revenue of $1.274bn in that quarter.
- For scale, Seeking Alpha puts Verizon at about 70,000 US cell sites and says T-Mobile has slightly more than AT&T or Verizon.
- The estimated accretion of $1.13 to $3.54 per share compares with a 2026 AFFO estimate of $11.11 — growth of 10% to 31%.
- The shares trade at about 16 times forward AFFO, Seeking Alpha says.
Why it matters
Tower owners have long argued that satellites complement ground-based networks rather than replace them, while the market has at times feared that a fully built-out satellite constellation would make large macro towers obsolete, according to Seeking Alpha. The publication says Starlink’s move to secure a large terrestrial footprint largely confirms the tower owners’ position: satellite internet performs well in rural and hard-to-reach places, while macro towers remain superior in populated, well-covered areas. That pairing is already visible outside the US, where satellite links feeding tower sites in Nigeria carried rural operator Africa Mobile Networks past its 2,000th site this month.
The sector also has a recent precedent for what a fourth tenant is worth. Seeking Alpha notes that tower REITs lost roughly the same amount of AFFO when Sprint disappeared as their fourth tenant as the Starlink leases would restore.
What counts as a “cell site”
Seeking Alpha flags genuine ambiguity in the 80,000 figure. If Starlink means purpose-built towers, that is a very high number: the Wireless Infrastructure Association, the US industry body for the sector, estimates there are 158,500 towers in the country. The publication suspects Starlink is referring instead to macrocell sites, of which it counts 254,850.
On the macrocell reading, Starlink would lease roughly 31.4% of US towers; on the stricter tower-only definition, up to 50%. With American Tower owning about 25% of the US tower market, that works out to somewhere between 13,113 and 20,882 leases on its towers.
Which figure drives the headline: the $1.13 per share estimate runs off the lower count of 13,113 leases. The 20,882 count is the upper-bound scenario and does not feed the published maths at all, and the $3.54 top of the range comes from a separate top-down calculation rather than from the higher lease count.
How the numbers were built
Seeking Alpha used two methods, stressing that leases are still in the early stages of being negotiated and that nothing is set in stone.
The top-down version
Assuming about $1.25bn in quarterly revenue, or $5bn a year, from the US and Canada segment, the publication says going from three tenants to four would in theory raise revenue by 33%, or $1.65bn. Because the existing towers already have space for additional equipment, there is virtually no incremental cost in adding a fourth tenant, so Seeking Alpha treats that revenue as flowing almost entirely into AFFO. Spread over 465.9 million shares, that is $3.54 per share.
The per-tower version
The second method starts from American Tower’s roughly $120,000 of annual revenue per US tower, which Seeking Alpha says implies about $40,000 per tenant once escalators and bonus rent for extra equipment are included. On 13,113 Starlink leases, it estimates about $299m at first if Starlink installs minimal equipment, rising towards $524m as its equipment volume approaches that of the other carriers — or $1.13 of AFFO per share.
What American Tower is saying
Two separate exchanges on the company’s third-quarter 2026 earnings call, both quoted by Seeking Alpha, set out its position. In one, chief executive Steven Vondran said: “We are really excited about the prospect of maybe having a new customer at scale in the U.S.” He said the company was encouraged by Starlink’s public statements and by the concrete steps it is taking to assemble the spectrum needed to be a viable player in the US market, adding that the development reinforced the long-standing argument that a wireless operator needs a terrestrial presence.
In a separate exchange on the same call, Vondran said the company would not get into the specifics of its discussions, while adding that anybody who wants to build a network in the United States at scale should be assumed to come to American Tower as one of their premier tower vendors. He named no lease volume, price or counterparty.
Incumbent carriers offer the countervailing view on whether Starlink can fund a US mobile business at all. Verizon’s chief executive has ruled out an MVNO deal with SpaceX and has said Starlink would need as much as $500bn to compete in US mobile.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does a mobile carrier pay to lease space on a US cell tower?
Seeking Alpha cites Digital Infrastructure as putting the average lease rate for a carrier at between $18,000 and $42,000 per year. A sample set of master lease agreements between tower REITs and carriers averaged $1,900 per month, or $22,800 a year, but Seeking Alpha notes those agreements cover only base rent and tenants pay bonus rent as they add equipment.
Does any of this change what Starlink’s own customers pay?
No. The analysis deals only with what a network tenant pays a tower owner to hang equipment on a mast. It sets out no consumer figures — no dish or kit price, no monthly subscription — for Starlink’s satellite internet service, and the leases concern Starlink’s direct-to-device mobile ambitions rather than its dish-based home broadband product.
What is AFFO?
AFFO, or adjusted funds from operations, is the cash-flow measure tower real estate investment trusts such as American Tower report in place of earnings per share. It excludes non-cash charges, principally depreciation on long-lived assets like towers, which is why the sector is usually valued on a multiple of AFFO rather than on reported profit.
Could American Tower win more than its proportional share of the Starlink leases?
Seeking Alpha says its calculation assumed proportional capture but that American Tower would probably take a significantly higher percentage of leases than its raw share of towers. The same analysis cautions that it will take many years for Starlink-leased towers to carry enough equipment to generate about $40,000 per tower per year.
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