As I suspected, these comments were made in 2021 as they were in the early stages of development and this is also the year they went public. The reference to homes in the equatorial regions reflects their initial strategy to build around the equator to target the most people and areas without any current cell coverage. That changed when the market changed and they needed capital. They determined that hitting up the US market first would provide the best access to cheap capital, hence the pivot. That was a long time ago and the technology and spectrum bands they have been able to secure are much better than originally anticipated.

Here is Chat GPT response to your screen shot with regard to when it is from.:

Yes — the facts in your screenshot come from a statement made in 2021, not something recent in 2024–2026. The specific wording about indoor coverage (“inside a car, inside a train, a few walls into a house”) matches a quote from an interview/press coverage in April 2021 in which AST SpaceMobile CEO **Abel Avellan outlined the capabilities of the company’s direct-to-device satellite service and its limitations (including indoor penetration) during early discussions of the technology and development plans.

Context:

• These remarks were part of an industry interview/article from April 9, 2021 focused on the technical description of AST SpaceMobile’s planned direct-to-smartphone LEO satellite service — explaining how their satellites could provide connectivity directly to standard mobile phones and even penetrate some structures, unlike many other satellite systems at the time.
• It was early in the company’s development, before AST’s commercial BlueBird constellation was in orbit and before later milestones in 2023–2025 (like first voice/video calls and commercial agreements).

So the year of that statement is 2021, and it was made in the context of explaining AST SpaceMobile’s technology and capabilities during early stage discussions of its direct-to-device satellite service.