I wouldn’t, but could be that’s just me.

AT&T CEO says Elon Musk’s SpaceX phone strategy not “viable”
Elon Musk’s plan to turn SpaceX into a major threat to the legacy telecom companies is “not a viable strategy,” AT&T CEO John Stankey tells Axios.

Why it matters: Musk and SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell recently touted their plan to turn the company’s Starlink satellite business into a global competitor to traditional phone-and-internet-service companies.

Driving the news: AT&T is betting on its strategy of deploying fiber infrastructure to boost its internet business at a time when AI is driving booming demand.

• The company on Tuesday announced a $3 billion deal with Corning to provide the infrastructure, saying fiber is three times faster than satellite.
• “Nothing beats it,” Stankey told Axios in an interview, adding that “satellite, at its best — if everything happens right over the next 10 years” — is “still not going to beat fiber.”

State of play: Starlink already competes with traditional telecom companies for home and business internet customers — and SpaceX is now talking about a mobile business that would put it in more direct competition with wireless carriers.

• “I anticipate us to be able to acquire quite a few of their customers because I think our service will be better,” Shotwell said in August on SpaceX’s first earnings call after going public.
• The shot across the bow caused shares to drop the next day for AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile.

Could be Mr Stankey is correct, could be he ain’t. Certainly, his bluff, can-do positivity is the right stance for a CEO in his position to be taking. We’ll see how it all shakes out soon enough, I reckon.

Myself, I’m nothing like tech-savvy enough to offer a useful opinion on the matter way or another. That said, though, I think we’ve all seen enough of Mr Musk by now to know that betting against him is not usually the way you wanna be going. And that, laddie-buck, is about as far out on this particular limb as I’m willing to extend myself.

Via Insty, who kinda-sorta endorses my above reticence as follows: “PEOPLE KEEP SAYING ELON CAN’T DO THINGS, BUT THEIR TRACK RECORD IS POOR.” T’is indeed, buddy-ro. T’is indeed.