Telecom & Connectivity Market Watch: Week of August 7, 2026

One earnings call reset the whole sector this week. SpaceX reported its first quarter as a public company on Tuesday, and COO Gwynne Shotwell used it to say out loud what the industry had been circling for a year: Starlink Mobile is going after AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile customers directly, backed by roughly 65 MHz of spectrum acquired from EchoStar and a plan to add low cost terrestrial base stations alongside the satellites. Carrier shares dropped 2 to 4 percent on the news, then largely recovered by Friday. Meanwhile the edge routing names split hard along one line: enterprise exposure. Digi and Netgear both posted enterprise strength, Digi with a beat and raise that sent it up 17 percent, while Inseego cut full year guidance and lost more than a fifth of its value. And the satellite consolidation endgame kept moving, with Hughes filing Chapter 11 and Globalstar, Iridium and EchoStar all sitting inside pending deals or restructurings.

Weekly Performance

Prices are closing prices for Friday, August 7, 2026. Weekly change is measured against the Friday, July 31, 2026 close, which was a normal trading day.

Company	Ticker	Close	Weekly Change
US Carriers
AT&T	T	$23.79	+2.23%
Verizon	VZ	$47.05	+0.51%
T-Mobile US	TMUS	$177.19	+2.59%
Router & Equipment Makers
Ericsson (Cradlepoint)	ERIC	$10.15	+3.47%
Semtech (Sierra Wireless)	SMTC	$139.42	+18.33%
Digi International	DGII	$81.70	+17.18%
Netgear	NTGR	$23.70	down 1.90%
Inseego	INSG	$5.51	down 21.62%
Cisco (Meraki)	CSCO	$121.43	+4.69%
Plover Bay (Peplink)	1523.HK	HK$8.10	down 2.88%
Satellite & Emerging
AST SpaceMobile	ASTS	$71.94	+21.97%
Iridium	IRDM	$49.93	+5.47%
Globalstar	GSAT	$83.40	+0.02%
EchoStar	ECHO	$89.88	+6.89%
Viasat	VSAT	$80.38	+4.49%
SpaceX	SPCX	$133.11	+22.83%

Note on EchoStar: the ECHO figure above is approximate. Settled end of day pricing for Friday was still inconsistent across sources at publication time, with quotes clustering between $89.60 and $90.20. The Thursday, August 6 close of $87.03 is firm.

Stories Behind the Moves

US Carriers

The SpaceX call on Tuesday was the only story that mattered for this group. Shotwell noted that the three national carriers generate roughly $600 billion a year between them and said she expects Starlink Mobile to take “quite a few” of those customers once next generation satellites launch in 2027. Verizon took the worst of it, falling 3.6 percent in after hours trade. By Friday all three had recovered and finished the week green, which suggests investors read the threat as a 2027 and beyond problem rather than a 2026 one.

AT&T also had the week’s most concrete piece of network news, selecting Ericsson to supply dual band 600 MHz and 700 MHz radios so it can deploy the roughly 20 MHz of nationwide 600 MHz spectrum it bought from EchoStar in a $23 billion deal that closed July 28. AT&T says it is now more than 60 percent through its wireless network modernization. T-Mobile went the promotional route, launching EIP Flex 36, which lets customers finance device taxes and fees over 36 months with nothing due at checkout.

Router and Equipment Makers

This was an earnings week, and the results split cleanly. Digi International delivered the standout: fiscal Q3 revenue of $139 million, up 29 percent year over year, adjusted EPS of $0.75 against $0.65 expected, record adjusted EBITDA margin of 29.1 percent, and annual recurring revenue at a record $191 million, up 52 percent. Management raised full year guidance. Netgear beat its own guidance with $168.6 million in revenue and, more importantly for the long term story, enterprise now accounts for more than half of revenue and about 69 percent of non GAAP gross profit.

Inseego went the other way. Revenue of $44.0 million actually beat guidance, but adjusted EBITDA came in at just $0.5 million, and the company cut full year revenue to roughly $155 million on product development delays, a slower than expected recovery at a major fixed wireless access customer, and removal of anticipated MSO revenue. Third quarter guidance of $28 million to $35 million is a steep step down. Semtech’s 18 percent gain had nothing to do with connectivity and everything to do with the broader AI and optical interconnect semiconductor rally. Cisco rose ahead of its August 12 earnings after Citi lifted its price target to $139. Plover Bay drifted lower on no news, giving back part of a 19 percent single day jump on July 31 that followed strong interim results, so the weekly decline reads worse than the underlying business does. Its Peplink Nasdaq spin off is still targeted for completion before the end of 2026.

Satellite and Emerging

SpaceX itself was the week’s best performer despite the volatility. Q2 revenue came in at $7.81 billion, up 92 percent, well ahead of expectations, with Starlink connectivity at $4.29 billion and 12 million subscribers after a record 1.7 million net adds. Capital expenditure of $18.4 billion in a single quarter spooked investors enough to knock the stock down 13.6 percent on Wednesday, and the IPO lockup expired Thursday, freeing up to 911.5 million insider shares. The stock absorbed both and then ripped 15.8 percent higher on Friday.

AST SpaceMobile successfully launched BlueBirds 11, 12 and 13 on Wednesday, the largest communications arrays ever put into low earth orbit, with expected peak rates approaching 200 Mbps direct to unmodified smartphones. It reports earnings Monday. EchoStar had a genuinely strange week: its Hughes Satellite Systems subsidiary filed Chapter 11 after failing to reach terms with bondholders on $1.5 billion of notes that matured August 1, with HughesNet broadband subscribers having fallen from 1.56 million at the end of 2020 to 681,000 in March under Starlink pressure. The stock rose anyway, because the market is now valuing EchoStar’s spectrum portfolio rather than its operating businesses. Viasat missed on revenue but beat badly on earnings and posted a record $4.2 billion backlog. Globalstar missed and swung to a loss, but its price is effectively pinned by the pending Amazon acquisition, which cleared its Hart Scott Rodino waiting period in July and is expected to close in 2027. Iridium had no real news; it is under a pending Rocket Lab acquisition at $54 per share.

Starlink and Amazon Leo

Beyond the Starlink Mobile announcement, SpaceX flew its 90th Falcon 9 of the year on Tuesday and the constellation now sits near 10,900 satellites. Musk claimed on the call that Starlink could deliver a majority of the world’s internet within ten years, a figure Shotwell immediately softened to “a significant portion of global internet traffic.” Amazon Leo was quiet this week, with only a new distributor agreement covering Spain and Portugal. The more consequential item sits just outside the window: in late July Amazon filed with the FCC for a 5,105 satellite direct to device constellation deploying from 2028, which would lean on Globalstar’s network once that acquisition closes. Constellation count stands near 396 satellites, with commercial service still targeted for later this year.

5Gstore Take

Three things worth acting on. First, the direct to device story is real but slow. Nothing announced this week changes what a business needs in 2026 or 2027 to keep a site, a vehicle or a remote asset online. Satellite backhaul is becoming a legitimate secondary path, not a replacement for a well configured cellular router with proper failover.

Second, Digi and Netgear both said the same thing in different words: enterprise and industrial connectivity is where the demand is, while consumer and single purpose hardware is under pressure. That matches what we see on our side. Customers are consolidating onto fewer, better managed devices with real SD-WAN and remote management behind them.

Third, if you are evaluating hardware right now, the vendor’s balance sheet matters as much as the datasheet. Inseego’s guidance cut and the Hughes bankruptcy are both reminders that multi year deployments outlive product cycles.

We stock and support the full range: Peplink, Cradlepoint, Sierra Wireless and Semtech, Inseego, Digi, Teltonika and Katalyst. If you want help matching a router platform to your carrier mix, failover requirements or fleet size, contact our team and we will walk through it with you.

FAQ

Why did carrier stocks fall and then recover in the same week?
SpaceX said on Tuesday that it intends to compete for wireless subscribers, but the upgraded service depends on satellites that launch in 2027. Investors sold the headline, then reconsidered the timeline.

Does this mean satellite will replace cellular routers?
No. Current direct to device service handles texting and low bandwidth messaging. Business grade throughput, low latency and multi WAN failover still run through cellular and wired links, with satellite increasingly used as one more path in the mix.

Why is EchoStar stock up while its Hughes unit filed for bankruptcy?
The market is valuing EchoStar primarily for its spectrum licenses, which it has been selling to AT&T and SpaceX, rather than for its legacy satellite broadband business.

Which of these companies actually make the routers 5Gstore sells?
Ericsson owns Cradlepoint, Semtech owns Sierra Wireless, and Plover Bay is the listed parent of Peplink. Digi, Inseego and Cisco Meraki are direct manufacturers. Teltonika and Katalyst are privately held.

How often is this published?
Every Friday afternoon after the US market close.

Disclaimer

This post is informational market commentary produced for readers who follow the connectivity industry. It is not investment advice, and nothing here should be treated as a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Prices reflect the latest available quotes at the time of writing and may differ from other sources. Always do your own research or speak with a licensed financial professional before making investment decisions.