SpaceX Band-Splitting Rules Ideas Get Pushback
SpaceX's petition for a revision of FCC spectrum-sharing rules among non-geostationary orbit systems (see here) got some agreement from other satellite operators on the broad outlines and strong pushback on the details, in filings Tuesday. O3b said SpaceX’s suggested language…
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for determining when a later round applicant is coordinated with a system authorized in an earlier round is undefined and incomplete. ViaSat said it agrees licensees in later processing rounds should protect licensees from earlier processing rounds against interference to a specified level, but "the devil is in the details" and SpaceX's proposed measures such as required sharing of beam pointing information have serious problems. Karousel said SpaceX's proposed efficiency test for adjudicating rights among licensees "appears certain to reward only SpaceX." It said instead that when band splitting is required, each party should be able to choose its preferred band segment and if parties choose the same one, random selection settles the dispute. Amazon's Kuiper said the FCC should avoid restrictive technical sharing requirements, and the current trigger requiring splitting is "overly conservative." It urged instead incentivizing less-interfering systems by awarding first choice of spectrum selection to satellite networks causing less interference in spectrum-splitting events. OneWeb urged denying the petition but said if the agency does initiate a rulemaking it should look at a spectrum sharing framework based on ITU date priority. SpaceX didn't comment.