NTIA is close to fully staffing the dozens of federal program officer (FPO) positions that will often be the face to states and broadband providers for the agency's broadband equity, access and deployment efforts, BEAD Program Director Evan Feinman told us. FPO outreach and preparation already underway is getting high marks from broadband provider stakeholders.
A growing number of satellite operators are resisting SpaceX's urging that conditions the FCC put on its second-generation constellation should be generally applicable to all constellations.
Noting the rocketing interest in satellite direct-to-handset mobile service tied to terrestrial mobile networks, the FCC will vote at its March meeting on a framework for collaboration between terrestrial and satellite service providers, Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel wrote Wednesday, announcing the March meeting agenda. That meeting also will have votes on rules requiring mobile wireless carriers to block robotext messages considered “highly likely to be illegal," and an inmate calling NPRM and order, she said. The agency will also seek comment on expanding audio description requirements “to all remaining broadcast markets” and on “whether the costs of further expansion would be reasonable,” wrote Rosenworcel.
The White House's directive that all construction materials used in federal infrastructure projects, including fiber cable, be American made shouldn't cause big delays in or cost run-ups for fiber for broadband equity, access and deployment (BEAD) projects, we were told. It's less clear whether the directive could cause challenges in obtaining the electronics -- typically made overseas -- used to light the fiber.
Satellite use of terrestrial spectrum for direct-to-device service "will be a big tension" at the 2023 World Radiocommunication Conference and a likely subject of a WRC-2027 agenda item, said EchoStar Senior Vice President-Regulatory Affairs Jennifer Manner Wednesday at a Venable panel on space regulation. Panelists said they were fully confident the FCC's reorganization to create a Space Bureau would happen, perhaps within months.
Lower orbits are going to become increasingly in demand, Viasat Chairman/CEO Mark Dankberg said Wednesday at the Smallsat Symposium. Some of that is due to the FCC's five-year post-mission disposal rule and because satellites in lower orbits will deorbit faster than in higher ones, he said. A challenge is that pretty much every altitude between 375 and 575 km has some traffic in it already, except for the band around the International Space Station, he said.
Local government interests urged Missouri lawmakers Tuesday that before adopting any legislation protecting streaming services from video service provider franchise fees, they should follow through on the promise to create a task force to look at the contentious issue of how rights of way are used and who should pay for their use. SB 152, which would amend state law so provision of streaming content is excluded from being considered a video service provider and thus liable for such fees, is premature before that task force can do its work, said Missouri Municipal League Executive Director Richard Sheets at a state Senate Commerce Consumer Protection Committee hearing.
Satellite-provided emergency SOS messaging is just the starting point for satellite operators looking to provide direct-to-handset service, but it won't be the business plan for anyone, said Iridium Director-Legal and Regulatory Coral Faradjian Tuesday in a Smallsat Symposium panel. She said the real revenue, and business plans, seamless transitions between terrestrial mobile and satellite-enabled services.
While the lineup of cable operators providing mobile service grows, with others likely to follow, most will rely on mobile virtual network operators and their own Wi-Fi networks to provide the service rather than become more active in acquiring spectrum for their own wireless networks, wireless and cable experts tell us.
SpaceX wants the conditions the FCC put on its second-generation constellation to be required of other satellite applications pending before the agency. In a series of near-identical filings with the International Bureau Tuesday, SpaceX said those conditions should be required of Amazon's Kuiper, Tomorrow Company's earth exploration satellite service constellation and Kepler's requested U.S. market access for its mobile satellite service. The conditions SpaceX seeks include the other operators having to file semi-annual reports on collision avoidance maneuvers and satellite disposal, including any difficulties or failures, and the agency employing with those operators a performance-based method for assessing disposal failures that accounts for the number of failed satellites and their entire passive decay time. SpaceX also urged the FCC to require the operators to coordinate with the National Science Foundation to reach agreement about mitigating their satellites' impact on optical ground-based astronomy and that there be related annual reporting requirements. SpaceX said questions remain about FCC authority regarding space sustainability, but the agency's rules, to be effective, "must apply ... equally to similarly situated operators, and not through a patchwork of conflicting licensing conditions." Adopting those conditions for the others would create "a meaningful and broadly applicable baseline for sustainable operations in space." The FCC, Kuiper, Tomorrow and Kepler didn't comment Wednesday. "The strategy seems more likely to be to hobble competitors, by increasing their perceived regulatory risk, especially in a challenging economic environment where those competitors either need to raise money, or (in the case of Kuiper) convince senior executives to continue pouring billions of dollars into the project," satellite and spectrum consultant Tim Farrar emailed. He said those operators aren't likely to advocate for the conditions to be removed from SpaceX. "In reality SpaceX doesn’t need them to be removed anytime soon, it will take several years (at a minimum) to get 12,000 Gen1 and Gen2 Starlink satellites on orbit," he said.