FCC Seen Facing Further Calls to Revisit Space Spectrum Rules
As non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) satellite systems become more established, the FCC will face more pressure to revisit the rules, frameworks and spectrum-sharing approaches they operate under, space regulatory consultant Patricia Cooper said Thursday at a New America/International Center for Law & Economics webinar.
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She and SpaceX and Amazon Kuiper representatives talked up the FCC's pending proceeding that contemplates changing the satellite spectrum-sharing regime between NGSO and geostationary orbit (GSO) fixed satellite service in certain bands. Commissioners adopted a sharing NPRM in April (see 2504280038) in response to a 2024 SpaceX petition urging changes to the GSO/NGSO sharing methodology (see 2408120018). But the proposal saw opposition during the webinar from Daniel Mah, vice president of legal and regulatory affairs at SES.
The existing spectrum-sharing rules have been flawed since their inception more than 20 years ago, said Cooper and the NGSO interests. "It was overprotection even back then," with GSOs having all the political leverage, said Kalpak Gude, Kuiper's head of regulatory affairs. Modifying the rules the way SpaceX and Kuiper have proposed would give them an eightfold improvement in capacity without affecting GSO systems, he said. It also would strengthen U.S. arguments at the 2027 World Radiocommunication Conference, which will also look at the spectrum-sharing rules, Gude said. Cooper noted that FCC action on the spectrum-sharing proceeding is expected before WRC-27.
SpaceX Satellite policy Director Jameson Dempsey said the spectrum-sharing rules are based on faulty methodology and resulted in a political compromise with very strict power limits. The net effects of the power limits and avoidance angles that NGSOs have to follow are that it's harder to provide high-quality service and there are limits on the number of people who can receive service, he added.
Mah challenged the need for new power limits and said revised rules would unfairly upend satellite competition. Pointing to the thousands of satellites that SpaceX has launched and the services it’s offering under the existing rules, Mah said it’s hard to see how those rules overprotective. “They’re outcompeting us in many respects.” The power limits ensure “everyone has room to play.”
Dempsey said the limits were an attempt to constrain NGSOs, and better limits would mean better service quality. Mah replied that SES customers would be negatively affected.
The NGSO operators and SES also disagreed about the details of reallocating 12.7-13.25 GHz for satellite downlinks. The FCC adopted a Further NPRM in May asking about opening the 12.7, 42 and 51.4-52.4 GHz bands, as well as parts of the W band, to satellite communications (see 2505280055). Dempsey said the 12.7 GHz reallocation proposal would help expand consumer service, since it's contiguous to the 10.7-12.7 GHz downlink band, and help with the downlink/uplink imbalance in the Ku band.
Mah agreed that satellite would make better use of the 12 GHz spectrum than terrestrial mobile. But he argued that since it's globally harmonized for uplinks, downlinks might not be the way to go.
Meanwhile, "it's almost criminal" how the 42 GHz band has been left fallow by terrestrial wireless, and satellite systems should be allowed access, Mah said.
Dempsey said SpaceX's third-generation satellites, which are under development, will offer 10 times the capacity of its existing satellites in orbit, allowing the company to deliver gigabit speeds and more symmetrical capacity.
Gude said Kuiper, which has close to 100 satellites in orbit now and is ramping up production and launch, plans to begin offering service by year-end in some parts of the world. While it's behind the competition, such as SpaceX, its differentiator will be its low-cost user terminals and its use of its AWS cloud-computing service as the backbone of its constellation.