Satellite news truck companies worry the pending C-band partial clearing could mean the end of their industry, since the lost spectrum is a necessary and irreplaceable resource. Satellite C-band providers say those occasional user worries are misplaced. Operators say their post-clearing plans leave enough spectrum to maintain service at least for the near term.
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
Rollout of a nationwide three-digit suicide prevention hotline will be given two years, not 18 months, under a draft order to be on the FCC's July 16agenda, it said Tuesday. The longer timeframe is getting acceptance from the mental health community. Some telecom interests argued the 18-month implementation in the NPRM was too short a time frame (see 2002180021) and see two years as still problematic.
Clearing the 3.7-4 GHz band of incumbent satellite services for terrestrial use of the spectrum will cost about $3.53 billion, under estimates from satellite providers that were due Friday. The FCC C-band clearing order in February cited estimates of $2.8 billion-$6.1 billion. The agency didn't comment Monday.
The news media's coverage of George Floyd's death and subsequent protests has been good, though care needs to be paid to not overly show footage of Floyd's death, NCTA President Michael Powell said on C-SPAN's Communicators to have been telecast over the weekend. Powell said he has "never been so torn and anguished" with the U.S. still being unable to "exorcise the demons and the ghosts of its ... slave past." He said that "absent cameras, this stuff gets brushed aside."
Some 800 ISPs suspended broadband data caps during the FCC's Keep Americans Connected pledge. In many cases, they'll be back after KAC expires at month's end, experts said in interviews. Data caps aren't directly part of the commitment. The agency did urge ISPs to "relax" them. Providers including AT&T and Comcast opted to provide unlimited data through the pledge. Asked what happens after June 30, they and numerous other major providers, plus the FCC, didn't comment Thursday.
Small satellite operators (SSO) ABS Global, Empresa and Hispasat's ask for a stay of the FCC's C-band clearing order (see 2005180036) didn't show they would be harmed without one since the deadline for ending operations is December 2025 and their compliance is easy because they aren't using the band to serve U.S. customers. That's according to the FCC Thursday in a U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit response (in Pacer, docket 20-1142). None of the initial transition steps of the next year-plus would harm the SSOs and the court has plenty of time to consider and decide before any payments are made to any satellite operator, it said. Joining the FCC were CTIA, AT&T, and Verizon, which said (in Pacer) they backed an expedited decision on the challenges to the order before the Dec. 8 C-band auction commences because that would "provide certainty that benefits the public and prospective auction bidders." They said a stay would cause "tremendous harm ... throughout the entire wireless ecosystem and the broader economy." Also opposing a stay, SES said (in Pacer) the C-band order was justified by the FCC's broad authority and the alleged economic harms to the SSOs aren't real. SSO outside counsel didn't comment.
Ligado's L-band terrestrial wireless plan had the backing of NTIA's technical staff and the DOD Chief Information Office, and NTIA's opposition seemingly was political, said Ligado in a letter Thursday to House and Senate Commerce Committee members. Defense emailed us that the entire DOD is opposed to the Ligado plan. "The Executive Branch’s views are publicly available in the FCC’s docketed proceeding," NTIA said.
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 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.
The FCC's C-band order, if not stayed, will mean "irreparable losses and competitive harm" to small satellite operators ABS Global, Empresa and Hispasat because they will be left with significantly less spectrum while their competitors will reap taxpayer-funded satellites and billions of dollars that should go to the Treasury, the three said Monday in an emergency motion for a stay. The SSOs told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (docket 20-1146, in Pacer) the stay must be granted by June 22, the order's effective date, or the big C-band satellite operators, their customers and wireless companies will start incurring clearing costs and doing auction preparation they will claim can't be undone fairly. Barring that stay, expedite briefing and argument so the spectrum auction set for Dec. 8 doesn't happen before the SSOs' appeal of the order is decided, they asked. The FCC emailed it's "confident that this misguided effort to delay the clearing of this critical band of spectrum to support 5G services will fail. These companies don't use C-band spectrum in the United States and have failed to show that they will suffer any imminent or irreparable harm from the procedures the FCC has put in place. In any event, their legal arguments are meritless." Its Wireless Bureau denied the SSOs' stay request last week (see 2006110041). Intelsat said it signed agreements with Maxar and Northrop Grumman for six new satellites for the C-band relocation -- four from Maxar, two from Northrop. It said it's in talks with satellite manufacturers about a seventh satellite for the C-band transition.
The FCC -- perhaps as soon as summer's end -- is expected to act on petitions to reconsider its Ligado order (see 2005210043), instead of letting the petitions sit in limbo, participants and watchers said in interviews last week. Three House Armed Services Committee leaders are pressing the commission about a potential “conflict of interest” involving Technological Advisory Council Chairman Dennis Roberson “that may cast doubt” on the commission’s Ligado approval. The Senate Armed Services Committee advanced a version of the FY 2021 National Defense Authorization Act last week that would bar “use of DOD funds to comply” with the Ligado order pending further review (see 2006110026).