No Clear Consensus on NGSO FSS Sharing Between Processing Rounds
The FCC is getting broad satellite industry agreement for better defining spectrum sharing rights between non-geostationary orbit fixed satellite service (FSS) systems authorized in different processing rounds. There's little consensus beyond that in replies Wednesday on SpaceX's petition for revised…
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spectrum-sharing rules among NGSOs (see 2006160045). Most agree the FCC needs to clarify the relationship between licensees authorized in different processing rounds and revisit the mechanism to determine the order in which licensees select “home” spectrum in the absence of coordination, SpaceX said. The company urged "a swift rulemaking" because any delay would perpetuate the lack of clarity in rules while the clock is ticking on NGSO operators' deployment milestones. Amazon's Kuiper said due to lack of agreement, next should be a notice of inquiry to gather more ideas to inform an NPRM. "The time is ripe" for a rulemaking to define spectrum sharing rights among different processing round NGSOs, giving superior rights to earlier round systems while providing opportunities for new entrants and system expansion, O3b said. SpaceX's approach would discourage coordination between parties, while merging processing rounds or relying on ITU priority to determine relative spectrum rights conflict with FCC policy, it said. Also critical, OneWeb said there's general agreement licensees from earlier NGSO FSS processing rounds should be entitled to some interference protection from applicants in subsequent ones. Telesat said there's no general agreement on defining and implementing interference protection, and whatever route the FCC goes shouldn't depend on sharing beam pointing information in real time, which couldn't be implemented for systems that assign frequencies dynamically and would require competitors to exchange highly sensitive proprietary information. The FCC should get input via an NPRM regarding how to define sharing procedures for NGSO FSS systems, Kepler Communications said. It said using ITU priority as the basis for spectrum sharing would go against long-held FCC position that applications should all have equal access to available spectrum.