Satellite operators are taking "a scorched-earth approach" to licensees with competing interests in their fight against opening up the 12 GHz band to terrestrial 5G, the MVDDS 5G Coalition said in docket 06-160 posting Wednesday. They said satellite claims there are no MVDD service subscribers or that MVDDS operators haven't used the 12 GHz band are inaccurate, as deployments have begun despite regulatory limits on power, antenna heights and other operating parameters. It said not re-examining 12 GHz band rules would "squander a valuable opportunity." The group said the 12.2-12.7 GHz band has good characteristics for terrestrial 5G deployment and expanding direct broadcast satellite services there could constrain that 5G deployment. There has been a push to use FCC-proposed direct broadcast satellite rules update as a route to opening up the band to other uses (see 1903270006).
Cellular backhaul is a lucrative direction for satellite but only if the industry first does a better job educating mobile network operators about pricing and ease of implementation and also creates solutions easy for MNOs to adopt, Northern Sky Research analyst Lluc Palerm-Serra blogged Tuesday. It said satellite has been the solution of last resort for MNOs, but the industry can now offer performance such as throughput that's on par with terrestrial alternatives, and satellite capacity pricing has come down due to high-throughput satellites. It said managed services could bridge the gap between satcom capabilities and MNOs' need to expand their broadband coverage.
Rather than leading to a price war across the broadband industry, satellite-delivered broadband likely will end up charging more than urban ISPs because they won't be trying to compete in those markets and instead will focus on markets where there isn't landline competition and they can charge a premium price, CCG Consulting President Doug Dawson blogged Friday. He said claims about gigabit speeds aren't realistic, given that operators aren't likely to limit bandwidth that way, but selling gigabit links at a premium price to small cellsites and ignoring the residential market altogether could be a tempting alternative for operators.
Sixty of its Starlink broadband satellites have successfully deployed, SpaceX tweeted Thursday night. That followed a launch earlier in the day on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida. This first batch of SpaceX's planned non-geostationary mega constellation comes after the FCC last month OK'd relocating part of it to a lower orbit (see 1904260071).
Boost Mobile as a stand-alone business wouldn't be a meaningful competitor, so Sprint's promised divestiture (see 1905200004) won't reduce the anticompetitive impact of T-Mobile/Sprint on prepaid wireless customers as Sprint claims it would, said Dish Network Thursday in FCC docket 18-197. It produced what it said was an internal Sprint document with heavy redactions that "directly contradicts" Sprint's public statements assuring that the Boost divestiture would remove any competitive doubts. Friday, Sprint didn't comment. A variety of groups told FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks' office that T-Mobile/Sprint will cost jobs (see 1905240026) while a number of Senate Democrats are urging the FCC and DOJ to deny the deal (see 1905230071).
Laser downlinks likely will play a big role in satellite communications given the RF bottleneck, with multiple companies proposing commercial downlink services, Northern Sky Research analyst Shivaprakash Muruganandham blogged Thursday. NSR said that optical ground station networks are one of several business models being bandied about, and complementary approaches like leveraging unused antenna time across a network of phased array antennas also could work as alternatives.
Meeting with an aide to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, Ligado recapped its commitments to mitigate any effects of its proposed broadband terrestrial low-power service on U.S. government GPS devices. In a docket 19-116 posting Thursday, it said its coexistence agreements with five major GPS device-makers ensure it won't cause harmful interference to commercial GPS, either. It also called Iridium-raised red flags (for example, see 1905150008) "the old Washington trick of using a regulatory process to harm a competitor." Iridium didn't comment.
EchoStar's selling its broadcast satellite service business to Dish Network (see 1905200003) takes care of what had been "a major growth anchor" with 16 straight quarters of declining revenues while also removing "the inherent overhang caused by the two companies' entangled relationship," the Quilty Analytics space industry researcher wrote investors Wednesday. It said a rename of EchoStar to Hughes wouldn't be surprising given all the original EchoStar assets will be Dish's. EchoStar didn't comment.
While new technology, such as standards involving compression, could make clearing more than 200 MHz of C band someday feasible, that technology doesn't exist today in customer networks, the C-Band Alliance told an aide to FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr. That's according to a docket 18-122 posting Tuesday.
The FAA is seemingly overstepping its bounds as its launch and re-entry NPRM (see 1904160002) proposes requiring data about use of encryption for satellites in orbit, space lawyer Laura Montgomery blogged Monday. While the agency isn't technically requiring payload operators employ encryption but merely describe how they're using it, the reporting burden seems to be pointless if the FAA doesn't expect to do something with the information, she said. Conversely, if the FAA does plan to do something, that would be regulating "on orbit," which is outside the agency's jurisdiction, she said. It would be "more appropriate" for other agencies to get this information, first by seeking authority from Congress, or there could be a move to amend the FAA's statute so it could ask for the information and potentially even do something with it, she said. The NPRM said that "encryption helps ensure against cyber intrusion, loss of spacecraft control, and potential debris causing events."