The Sunday Signal: The End of Mobile Networks, the Failure of Grants, and the Habit of Startups

Essential insights on technology, money and government.

Issue #25 – Sunday 5 October 2025

The Bottom Line Up Front

Mobile networks, as we have known them, are on borrowed time. Starlink’s satellites are building a global grid of connectivity, offering data anywhere without roaming or gouging. At the same time, Britain’s grant system is failing to turn innovation into companies of scale. And too many of our startups have become hooked on subsidies rather than customers.

This week, we look at three areas where the old order is fraying and where habit has become a substitute for progress.

The End of Mobile Networks?

When I was in California in 2019, I was persuaded to invest in Elon Musk’s latest escapade, “Starlink,” which at the time was billed as part of his mission to colonise Mars. How little did I know that he was in fact building the first global telecommunications company.

Starlink has already launched thousands of satellites into low Earth orbit, covering vast swathes of the planet. The service is now expanding into direct-to-phone capability. In July, T-Mobile in the US switched on T-Satellite, initially supporting SMS and MMS. In October it will extend to data services. That means data anywhere on the planet, without towers, roaming fees or the stranglehold of traditional networks.

The implications are staggering. In Britain, where mobile speeds lag behind France, the US and Germany, the contrast is clear. A Speedtest Global Index ranking shows the UK in the slow lane, far behind the Netherlands and light-years behind the UAE.

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Vodafone has not missed the threat. It has partnered with AST SpaceMobile to build a satellite network that works directly with 4G and 5G smartphones. A world-first video call was already made from a remote corner of Wales. The service aims to cover the whole of Europe, taking on Musk’s Starlink and Jeff Bezos’s Project Kuiper.

The government, meanwhile, dithers. Its billion-pound Shared Rural Network is being watered down to save money while the private sector races ahead.

And then there is the rumour. The so-called Tesla Pi phone, a viral myth dismissed by Musk himself. But imagine if it is true. A phone hardwired into Starlink. Free global data. Solar charging. Integrated AI chips. Apple and Samsung would be staring at an existential threat. Carriers would see their monopoly vanish overnight. Roaming, contracts, and coverage maps would be relics of the past. It may not exist today, but the very possibility is enough to send tremors through the industry. The disruption is not in the handset. It is in the sky.

Do Grants Really Work?

Innovate UK is fond of pointing to the number of projects supported, patents filed and jobs created. Yet counting outputs is not the same as measuring outcomes. The uncomfortable truth is that Britain’s grant system has become a machine that rewards form-filling rather than commercial success.

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The Smart Grant was the most glaring example. Success rates collapsed to as low as two or three per cent. That means nineteen out of twenty companies wasted a month of their time on complex applications that went nowhere. A single application can take eighty to a hundred hours of effort. For small firms, that is a month stolen from research or sales. At a national level, it is a vast transfer of talent from building companies to filling in forms.

Even those lucky enough to succeed often found that the structure worked against them. Funding was paid quarterly in arrears, forcing young firms to find cash up front and wait for reimbursement. Many were pushed into taking expensive bridging loans. A grant designed to relieve financial pressure often ended up making it worse.

The deeper problem lies in alignment. Civil servants and academics are not trained to judge markets. Projects are funded because they tick the right thematic box rather than because they have customers waiting. Catapults, housed inside universities, are meant to be engines of commercialisation, yet they inherit the wrong incentives. Publications and research rankings matter more to them than revenues and market traction. The result is a system that produces reports and prototypes but too few companies that scale.

It does not have to be this way. Databricks began as a research project at Berkeley, where I first met the CEO, Ali Ghodsi. We helped fund the work that would eventually spin out of the university. The company did not linger inside academia. It built products, won customers and attracted investors. Today, Databricks has a private market valuation of more than one hundred billion dollars, confirmed in September after a one billion dollar Series K. It reports a four billion dollar annualised revenue run rate, with over one billion from AI products alone. That is what a real spin-out looks like when it is driven by entrepreneurial leadership and private capital, not by bureaucratic subsidy.

Contrast this with Britain. Funds have been committed to companies that later dissolved. Projects have gone unpaid even after completion. Oversight from UK Research and Innovation has been patchy, with poor data systems and little strategic coherence. It feels less like an innovation pipeline and more like a jobs programme.

The United States is ruthless but effective. The SBIR scheme funds the very early stage, then the baton passes to the market. Customers and investors decide who survives. Britain, by stretching grants deep into the commercial journey, has created a culture of dependency rather than a culture of scaling.

The closure of the Smart Grant earlier this year was both a shock and a relief. Its replacement, the Growth Catalyst, at least recognises some flaws. Funds are more front-loaded, the sectors are more targeted, and there is an effort to spread awards beyond London and the South East. Labour’s pledge of eighty-six billion pounds for R&D is significant, but unless the structure changes, it will repeat the same mistakes.

The true measure of efficacy should be follow-on investment, survival rates and revenue growth, not the number of grants awarded. By that standard much of the system would struggle to justify itself. Until Britain stops confusing paperwork with progress and starts focusing on customers, it will continue to waste time, talent and treasure. Grants can be catalysts, but if they become the main course they are not just inefficient, they are destructive.

Startups Must Kick the Government Grant Habit

​My weekly column in the Yorkshire Post​

When I returned from Silicon Valley, the biggest shock was how many British startups were orienting themselves not around customers, but around government grants . Entire strategies were built to win Innovate UK competitions rather than to win revenue. Success was measured by Horizon bids rather than clients signed.

Grants have their place. At the laboratory stage, when an idea is unproven, public money can bridge the gap. But too often they become a business model. I have met founders whose pitch decks devote more slides to grant history than to customer traction. Teams become addicted to form filling instead of selling. The result is a generation of companies that look more like quasi government projects than startups.

Innovate UK’s own impact reports trumpet jobs created and projects funded. But how do we measure real outcomes? The true metric is follow-on investment, scaling revenue and survival in the market. Civil servants cannot play venture capitalist. Catapults housed in universities risk cementing the problem, encouraging dependency rather than commercial hunger.

In America, the rule is brutal: convince customers or die. That sharp edge forces clarity. Britain needs more of it. Founders should treat grants as seasoning, not the main course. Once you have a product, your north star is customers. Nothing else matters.

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🚀 Final Thought

Progress is Not Polite

Starlink is tearing up the rulebook of mobile networks. Vodafone and the rest of the incumbents are scrambling to react, but they are defending towers when the battlefield has already moved to the sky. Innovate UK is still writing cheques to companies that never scale, while Databricks, born in a university lab but raised in the market, shows what happens when entrepreneurial fire meets real capital. British startups keep mistaking government paperwork for customers, confusing the noise of grants with the signal of revenue.

Habit is the common thread. The habit of mobile operators who still think in terms of towers. The habit of government departments that measure applications rather than outcomes. The habit of founders who believe another grant round is progress. Habits become rituals, and rituals become excuses. They feel safe, but they are fatal.

The lesson is simple and it is harsh. The world rewards execution, not excuses. Companies that cling to towers will die when satellites take the field. Countries that cling to grants will be left behind by those that bet on markets. Founders who cling to subsidies will never discover the discipline of customers.

Progress is not polite. It punishes those who delay. It ignores those who defend the past. It rewards those who act. Britain has ideas, but ideas are worthless without execution. It has money, but money locked in grants and pensions is money wasted. The old order mistakes habit for permanence. The new order will have no such illusions.

Until next Sunday,

David

David Richards MBE is a technology entrepreneur, educator, and commentator. The Sunday Signal offers weekly insights at the intersection of technology, society, and human potential.

© 2025 David Richards. All rights reserved.

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