Exclusion zones around Iridium feeder-link earth stations to prevent interference from earth stations in motion in the 29.25-29.3 GHz band are unworkable because ESIMs carry unknowns about their location and number that run contrary to the idea, Iridium said in a docket 17-95 FCC filing posted Friday. It said 50 MHz is "beyond insignificant" for ESIM users and it should be excluded from the ESIMs proposal. Barring that, consideration of the band should be deferred until there's a shown need and identifiable solution to the coordination issue, the company said on meeting to an aide to Commissioner Mike O'Rielly. Iridium has argued for protection of the band from ESIM use (see 1801180052 and 1709270026).

OneWeb is continuing resistance to band segmentation to resolve inline events between non-geostationary orbit fixed satellite service systems (see 1806220003 and 1803050047). A docket 16-408 filing Thursday recapped meeting an aide to Chairman Ajit Pai. The company wants to work with FCC staff on "an appropriate ... reasonable and workable sharing regime."

Space traffic management (STM) is going to require some kind of enforcement structure, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said at a Politico event Wednesday evening. "In space, everybody's on their own right now," he said: "Nobody can compel somebody to make a maneuver" in the event of a predicted collision. He said enforcement needs to be balanced with ensuring a light regulatory touch. He said STM and space situational awareness (SSA) are major White House priorities. He said having the Commerce Department take over the dissemination of Air Force Joint Space Operations Center SSA data is a viable model for freeing JSpOC of such work. But, he said, a better route might be having Commerce license commercial and nonprofit and educational entities to do SSA and STM work and create a competitive market for such activity. Bridenstine defended NASA's space launch system under development as not competing -- yet -- with commercial launch capabilities. With rocket development in the launch industry, NASA in the future might "have to rethink" using commercial options instead, but "we're not there yet," the administrator said. "We can't give up our government capability when we don't have an alternative yet," he said. "I want" commercial operators to get to Mars before NASA does, Bridenstine said, with the accomplishment being most important. He supports the idea of a Space Force, pointing to the primacy of satellites in areas ranging from communications to commerce and the rise of anti-satellite military capabilities of "near-peer competitors" such as China. President Donald Trump pledged creation of a Space Force as a sixth military branch (see 1806180028).

Blue Origin, SpaceX and United Launch Alliance are pushing Congress for launch and re-entry rules overhaul. The FAA launch licensing regime was designed decades ago and the current rules are not reflective of reusability technology, SpaceX Senior Counsel Caryn Schenewerk told the House Aviation Subcommittee Tuesday. In prepared testimony, Schenewerk backed one unified set of launch licensing rules that cover all vehicle types, mission profiles and launch sites. She said the current 180-day review period for launch license applications, coming atop the 50-day timeline for accepting an application for review, "is clearly impractical" and said there instead should be a 60-day time frame for license approval and a 15-day review for determining if an application is complete. She said the FAA should allow licensing of launch vehicles for multiple launch sites. Blue Origin Deputy General Counsel Audrey Powers backed shortened application review timelines. With the FAA working toward an NPRM with one set of proposed rules covering licensing requirements for all launch and re-entry vehicles, with a February deadline, that tight deadline could see the agency relying too heavily on some new-entrant launch companies, ULA Associate General Counsel Kelly Garehime said.

Eutelsat is considering making an offer for Inmarsat, it said Monday. Inmarsat didn't comment. Some expect EchoStar to make another run at buying Inmarsat (see 1806110035).

Telesat Canada and OneWeb are locking horns with ViaSat over use of band segmentation to resolve inline events between non-geostationary orbit fixed satellite service systems. In an FCC docket 16-408 filing Thursday, the companies disagreed with ViaSat arguments in favor of band segmentation. They said the fact band-splitting rule applies when there's no prior coordination agreement and requires real-time resolution of interference runs headlong into the unworkability of a real-time exchange of data. They said even if it weren't, that information would be commercially and customer sensitive. ViaSat emailed us Friday that the FCC "has developed a level playing field" for coordination between non-geostationary orbit systems, and "band splitting is the fall back mechanism to ensure good faith coordination." It said the framework "was adopted with a full understanding of Telesat and OneWeb’s desire for an ITU priority-based regime in which the satellite operators would control spectrum access. The Commission’s approach, based on long-standing policy, strikes the right balance and nothing in the current Telesat/OneWeb filing changes that. The Commission should affirm its previous decision and let the operators move on to system coordination and implementation." OneWeb petitioned the FCC to revisit the band-splitting portion of NGSO rules adopted last year (see 1801180060).

The FCC International Bureau is giving 90 extra days, to Oct. 17, for operators of receive-only earth stations in the 3.7-4.2 GHz band to register those earth stations, it said in a docket 17-183 public notice Thursday. It also said it will allow registration of multiple fixed satellite service antennas located at the same address or geographic region to be listed on a single Form 312, with one registration fee covering the multiple antennas. It said registration of large numbers of geographically diverse earth stations can be done via an application for a single network license, with a $10,620 license fee. The FCC has received multiple requests for revamping its C-band earth station registration requirements and extending the registration window (see 1805300023). In a separate public notice in the docket, the bureau said it's temporarily freezing new satellite applications and requests for U.S. market access on non-U.S. licensed satellites providing fixed satellite service in the 3.7-4.2 GHz band. It said the freeze was "to preserve the current landscape" of authorized C-band operations pending FCC action on more flexible use and intensive fixed use of the band.

The U.S. Solicitor General and the FCC asked the Supreme Court not to hear a complaint by Dish Network designated entities SNR Wireless and Northstar Wireless about how the FCC handled AWS-3 auction bidding credits. The DEs filed a petition in January with the Supreme Court seeking writ of certiorari and appealing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit's August ruling that upheld the FCC withholding credits because of the DEs’ close ties to Dish (see 1708290012). The D.C. Circuit “correctly upheld the FCC’s determination that petitioners were ineligible for very-small-business bidding credits -- available to businesses with less than $15 million in annual revenues -- because they are affiliates of, and subject to de facto control by, a Fortune 250 company with $13 billion in revenue that is attributable to petitioners under FCC rules,” said the federal brief. “Petitioners do not directly challenge the court of appeals’ conclusion that the FCC reasonably applied its relevant regulations and precedents, nor do they suggest that this holding conflicts with any decision of this Court or another court of appeals. Instead, they challenge … the court of appeals’ finding that petitioners had fair notice of how the FCC would apply those regulations and precedents to the circumstances of this case. That contention lacks merit.” The brief was filed in Supreme Court docket No. 17-1058.

Intelsat is partnering with Latin American broadcaster Globoto beam live 8K video transmissions of the World Cup to the Museu de Amanhã science museum in Rio de Janeiro, said the satellite operator Friday. The signal is being transmitted as a 200 Mbps video stream at the International Broadcast Center in Moscow and transported to Tokyo, where it will then be carried to Intelsat via the Intelsat “point of presence” in New York, it said. The signal will be transmitted on the IntelsatOne terrestrial network to Intelsat’s teleport in Atlanta, where it will be re-encoded at 90 Mbps using a special NTT 8K H.265 real-time encoder, it said. Once the video is compressed and modulated, it will be uplinked to Intelsat 14, the company’s “emerging HD video neighborhood in Latin America known for its HD and 4K content distribution,” it said.

The filing window for initial registration of fixed satellite service earth stations seeking protection from citizens broadband radio service users in the 3.5 GHz band opened Friday, the FCC said. “Initial registration can be completed at any time,” a public notice said. “Earth station licensees requesting protection must also update their registration in the event of a change in any of the operational parameters.” The PN was released by the Wireless and International bureaus and the Office of Engineering and Technology.