The launch market is oversaturated, with room for two U.S. launchers in the medium and heavy payload space, United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno said Tuesday at Satellite 2020. Those two would be alongside Arianespace and Russia's launch capabilities, since Europe and Russia will guarantee those two persist, he said. In the small payload space, SpaceX anticipates "two or so" launches a month this year, either for customers or its own StarLink satellites, said President Gwynne Shotwell. She said SpaceX pricing is about as low it can go for its existing rockets. She said its Starship under development could change the economics of crewed spaceflight.
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 FCC is going to be sued anyway for February's C-band clearing order (see 2002280044), so why bother offering up to $9.7 billion in incentives to incumbent satellite operators, because they won't prevent lawsuits, argued Senate Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee Chairman John Kennedy, R-La., repeatedly Tuesday. He spoke at a subcommittee hearing ostensibly about the FCC FY 2021 budget request, challenging agency Chairman Ajit Pai to justify the amount. Lawmakers pressed the agency about fixing its broadband mapping and tackling contraband phones. Kennedy said there will be another such hearing on the issues and the agency's budget request.
Don’t expect to see other nations to follow the FCC’s lead on how it’s repurposing part of the C band for terrestrial use, especially on satellite operator compensation, satellite experts said Monday at Satellite 2020. Morgan Lewis satellite and wireless lawyer Tim Bransford said other nations often can take a more unilateral approach, such as sunsetting the use of some spectrum, and compensation is typically less part of the process. Organizers of the trade show/conference said it was little harmed by COVID-19 worries.
The FCC got no pushback to proposed implementation of Section 1003 of the Television Viewer Protection Act of 2019 (TVPA) by amendment of its rules to let small MVPDs designate a buying group to negotiate on their behalf and the proposed definitions of large station groups and qualified buying groups in docket 20-31 comments. Beyond its proposals, NTCA said the agency “must do more” in the form of retransmission consent rules reforms such as bans on forced tying and tiering. ACA Connects agreed with the proposed rules changes. NAB called the proposed rules changes “appropriate to effectuate the TVPA.” The legislation passed in December (see 1912190068).
The 25-year deadline for de-orbiting a satellite after its mission is becoming a central point of contention on how the FCC should incorporate new federal orbital debris mitigation standard practices (ODMSP) into an expected update of its orbital debris rules. Satellite Industry Association Senior Director-Policy Therese Jones said the expectation is the agency will have a draft orbital debris order out in the first half of this year.
Every incumbent C-band satellite operator being compensated for clearing the band took a slight haircut from what the FCC initially said except Intelsat. That company came out slightly better when it comes to recalculated accelerated clearing incentive payments. That's according to our side-by-side comparison of the order approved 3-2 at the agency's Friday meeting (see 2002280044) and released Tuesday evening with the draft order. Among changes, phases I and II of the transition are decoupled and clearing deadlines are pushed back.
America's Communications Association is postponing its annual Washington, D.C., summit, scheduled for March 17-19, citing coronavirus concerns.
The FCC NPRM approved Friday on possibly dumping or modifying the requirement cable operators keep records in online public inspection files about attributable interests in video programming was released Monday. It's essentially unchanged from the draft NPRM on what questions are asked, according to our side-by-side comparison. It was OK'd 5-0 with the Democratic commissioners concurring.
Tentative plans by DOJ's Antitrust Division and the FTC not to challenge a vertical transaction if the parties have a share of less than 20% of a relevant market raised several red flags in comments submitted last week. The agencies got several recommendations that we received earlier (see 2002270043). We asked both Wednesday for all the submissions, and received a link from the FTC. Last week, we had filed a Freedom of Information Act request for them, which we are seeking on Monday to withdraw.
Who gets what accelerated relocation incentive payments in the FCC's C-band auction regime went largely unchanged in the band-clearing order approved 3-2 along party lines Friday (see 2002280005), said Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioner Mike O’Rielly. Big rewrites of the draft order weren't expected (see 2002270048). The meeting was at times contentious, with pointed Republican and Democratic statements. Incumbent small satellite operators (SSO) plan to go to court.