C-Band Recon Petitions Have Allies, Opposition

buildout, and delaying telemetry, tracking and control gateway earth station consolidation from December 2021 to December 2023 will limit the efficiency of the transition and otherwise delay provision of 5G services. It said the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization's recon petition is trying to impermissibly expand reimbursement costs beyond what's needed for the transition. Inmarsat and Hughes/EchoStar agreed with Eutelsat the FCC should clarify the order to make clear that reimbursements to C-Band operators are for only reasonable and necessary costs, and that satellites built using reimbursed funds are dedicated to serving the U.S. only in the band for the entirety of their useful lives. SES said Eutelsat's recon petition was "a transparent effort to undermine the transition" of SES and other eligible satellite operators as it tries to "graft new, arbitrary conditions onto the standards for reimbursement of relocation costs." Intelsat also opposed Eutelsat's petition and said requiring satellite operators to buy satellites with a C-band-only payload providing coverage solely to the contiguous U.S. would deviate from industry practice, introduce significant new cost burdens and inefficiencies and create inevitable delays. Intelsat said the FCC will have oversight of the relocation payment clearinghouse to prevent reimbursement of unnecessary costs. Boeing also opposed Eutelsat's recon petition. Some petitions, such as Charter's, reargue issues the C-band order fully addressed, while Intelsat's makes requests that would introduce uncertainty in the transition process, CTIA said, urging they all be denied. AT&T, also urging they all be rejected, said they improperly seek preemptive determinations on the reasonableness of specific transition reimbursement claims, which are decisions the FCC delegated to the clearinghouse. T-Mobile and Verizon also said they all should be denied. NCTA said Intelsat's recon petition raises valid red flags about out-of-band emissions and the FCC should clarify that new 3.7 GHz service licensees must protect incumbent earth stations from harmful interference and cooperate in good faith with earth station operators to remediate harmful interference. Also to be clarified are respective roles of 3.7 GHz service licensees and satellite operators in preventing and resolving harmful interference to earth stations from new 3.7 GHz service licensees during and after the transition period, the association said.