The U.S. can help mitigate orbital debris by such things as investing in better cataloging of debris, mandatory beacons on satellites to enable better tracking, and pushing a moratorium on anti-satellite testing, said commercial space operator and other speakers at a White House Office of Science and Technology Policy event. Debris remediation was the topic of a similar session last week (see 2201130054). OSTP Space Policy Assistant Director Ezinne Uzo-Okoro said the feedback from the space community will help guide a plan to be issued this summer for agencies on policy actions and R&D the U.S. should prioritize for orbital debris.
Matt Daneman
Matt Daneman, Senior Editor, covers pay TV, cable broadband, satellite, and video issues and the Federal Communications Commission for Communications Daily. He joined Warren Communications in 2015 after more than 15 years at the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, where he covered business among other issues. He also was a correspondent for USA Today. You can follow Daneman on Twitter: @mdaneman
The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding Maine's prorated cable TV refunds law (see 2201040072) opens the door to other states pursuing similar rules, consumer and cable regulatory experts told us. Whether they actually will is less clear. The ruling reversing a lower court's rejection of the Maine law could mean a 3rd Circuit reversal of a lower court's agreeing with Altice that the Cable Act preempts the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities' prorating rule (see 2108240043), experts said.
FCC handling of designated entities SNR Wireless and Northstar Wireless got probing Friday by Judge Harry Edwards as he repeatedly criticized the idea that ostensible investor protections gave Dish Network de facto control of the DEs when the FCC hadn't worried about those same protections in past DE situations. Judge Patricia Millett tore into the DEs' assertion that they had made substantive changes from the original terms of their investor agreements with Dish, in the nearly two-hour U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit oral argument (docket 18-1209). The DEs are challenging the FCC's 2020 rejection of the AWS-3 bidding credits -- the second time the agency did so (see 2011230062). New Street Research's Blair Levin said the panel appeared to side with FCC arguments, as was expected.
The U.S. government is a big generator of a lot of low earth orbit debris and should kick-start a nascent debris remediation market by becoming a big buyer of remediation services, said space companies and interests Thursday at a White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) event. Speakers -- many of them from debris remediation startups -- made cases for government spending to give impetus to aspects of the market. There were calls for more clarity on the legal and policy framework around debris remediation.
Expect more cable operators to roll out wireless mobility service in 2022 or 2023, analysts told us. The mobile subscriber growth Comcast, Charter Communications and Altice have had since starting their services likely won't level off for some time, they said.
Some orbital altitudes are becoming increasingly dangerous because of growing amounts of orbital debris, Darren McKnight, senior technical fellow for orbital debris monitoring company LeoLabs, said Thursday in a University of Washington webinar. He said 780 km to 850 km is becoming a hotbed of debris generated by the U.S., China and Russia. He said 1400 km is also becoming problematic, compounded by atmospheric drag helping clear lower altitudes over time, but at 1400 km "it's there for centuries." The U.S. is "woefully behind the rest of the world" on the need for active debris remediation, with French, Japanese and European space agencies "way ahead," he said. "It's been seen as something we can worry about decades later. We need to worry about it now." Mega constellations "are really the victim" rather than the causes of increasing orbital debris concerns, McKnight said. He said operators like SpaceX and OneWeb are "operating very responsibly" and going beyond government regulatory requirements, though they still will likely face difficulties because of debris from old payloads and rocket bodies. Russia's anti-satellite missile demonstration in November (see 2111160063) raised the likelihood of a collision in some orbits by a factor of two, generating 500 to 2,000 trackable pieces of debris and probably ten times that in untraceable debris, he said. Technology has changed notably since 1997, when the 25-year guideline that's now become an international norm was established, he said. Electric propulsion systems would accommodate requiring satellites be deorbited one or five years after end of mission, though no nations have gone that route, he said. He said along with technical solutions to remediate debris, more preemptive efforts are needed to prevent debris generation, such as increased information sharing by satellite operators and inter-government trust.
Satellite interests resisted keeping non-terrestrial services out of the 70/80/90 GHz bands or making fixed satellite service (FSS) secondary to terrestrial use there (see 2112030056), in docket 20-133 reply comments this week. The FCC is considering high-altitude platform systems operations in the bands. Amazon Kuiper said it backs a "unified, service-agnostic, light-licensing and link registration framework -- such as the one proposed by SpaceX for 'pencil-beam' antennas" as a way to increase use of the bands while fostering coexistence. It said FSS being secondary in the bands would be inefficient, especially since that spectrum's terrestrial use is limited to high-throughput transmissions over very short distances. Geneva Communications also said it backs SpaceX's proposal. The Satellite Industry Association said there are already co-primary FSS spectrum allocations in the bands and some satellite operators are developing networks that will operate there. SpaceX suggested coexistence in the bands via equivalent isotropically radiated power limits toward the horizon for FSS gateways, creating small coordination areas and eliminating the need for keep-out zones or caps on the number of earth stations. Aeronet Global's study of coexistence between scheduled dynamic data links and FSS in the 71-76 GHz and 81-86 GHz bands doesn't take a broad-enough look at possible SDDL interference to geostationary and non-geostationary operations in the bands, with GSO earth stations particularly susceptible to interference from SDDL aircraft transmissions, Hughes said. It said the Aeronet study claims that any alignment of SDDL aircraft beams and GSO satellite beams will be brief don't consider the stationary position of GSOs relative to the ground, which contributes to a longer aircraft/GSO beam alignment. Aeronet outside counsel didn't comment. TechFreedom said the FCC should allow use of 70 MHz beyond 5G. “The lone holdouts to broadening the uses of the 70 GHz are some 5G users, who covet the spectrum for wireless backhaul operations, to the exclusion of new uses (and apparently to the exclusion of existing allocations as well),” the group said: “Engineering changes, history changes, and we can’t afford to go ‘all in’ on 5G if it means robbing all other users of spectrum and shutting down technological innovation. Instead, the FCC must balance the need for more 5G spectrum with existing allocations and other spectrum users’ needs.”
A relatively steady stream of complaints about media bias or "fake news" lodged with the FCC against cable news networks in 2020 became a torrent in the days after the 2020 presidential election, per our analysis of more than 1,500 complaints obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request. Many complaints also urged the FCC to police the cable networks, but agency watchers called that unlikely.
A growing number of localities are suing video streaming platforms seeking franchise fees, and more lawsuits are expected in 2022. Tax experts think such suits face legal difficulties. Netflix and Hulu, typically the defendants of such suits, didn't comment.
Four companies will pay $6.3 million in penalties for 911 outages last year, the FCC announced Friday. Some said they had made procedural changes to avoid a repeat. Lumen will pay $3.8 million, Intrado $1.75 million, AT&T $460,000 and Verizon $274,000. Both Lumen and AT&T said their blackouts involved work by vendor Intrado. See our news bulletin here.