We have ourselves an international trade war concerning satelite spectrum. FCC rejects the idea of "first-come-first-served" and supports mechanism that allow equal spectrum sharing among applicants in the same licensing round. But it can only do so overhead USA. SpaceX competitors, like OneWeb, contend that SpaceX should be forced to subject to ITU Coordination, that currently assigns use of the spectrum based on ITU filling date priority.
This argument will certainly be applied in other countries with less concerned regulators, so we will have a complex patchwork of rules from one country to the next and the satellites will have to switch bands repeatedly in a single orbit. The ability to block a competitor from operating in certain territories has massive commercial and geopolitical implications:
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ITU Coordination. In its Petition to Deny, Telesat observes that international coordination
will be required between the SpaceX system and its own NGSO FSS system. Telesat argues that, at
minimum, any grant to SpaceX should be conditioned upon compliance with this international obligation.
In response, SpaceX argues in support of the Commission’s avoidance of in-line interference regime,
which, it asserts, yields more efficient spectrum sharing results than a regime based solely upon ITU
priority. We recently declined to adopt Telesat’s proposal to tie coordination obligations and licensing
conditions directly to ITU filing dates by awarding priority according to those dates, and accordingly
deny Telesat’s petition in so far as it reiterates Telesat’s ITU filing date priority proposal. We include a
condition requiring SpaceX, like all other NGSO FSS operators, to comply with the spectrum sharing
requirements specified in section 25.261 of the Commission’s rules with respect to any other NGSO
system licensed or granted U.S. market access pursuant to the processing rounds in which SpaceX
participated. We recently adopted changes to section 25.261 that replaced the avoidance of in-line
interference methodology for triggering spectrum division (absent coordination) with a default spectrum
splitting sharing mechanism that is triggered when the change in system noise temperature caused by
interference, or ΔT/T, exceeds a threshold of 6 percent. However, we note that outside the United States
(i.e., when communications to or from the U.S. territory are not involved) the coexistence between
SpaceX’s operations and operations of a system that received a grant for access to the U.S. market are
governed only by the ITU Radio Regulations as well as the regulations of the country where the earth
station is located and are not subject to section 25.261.
This argument will certainly be applied in other countries with less concerned regulators, so we will have a complex patchwork of rules from one country to the next and the satellites will have to switch bands repeatedly in a single orbit. The ability to block a competitor from operating in certain territories has massive commercial and geopolitical implications:
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ITU Coordination. In its Petition to Deny, Telesat observes that international coordination will be required between the SpaceX system and its own NGSO FSS system. Telesat argues that, at minimum, any grant to SpaceX should be conditioned upon compliance with this international obligation. In response, SpaceX argues in support of the Commission’s avoidance of in-line interference regime, which, it asserts, yields more efficient spectrum sharing results than a regime based solely upon ITU priority. We recently declined to adopt Telesat’s proposal to tie coordination obligations and licensing conditions directly to ITU filing dates by awarding priority according to those dates, and accordingly deny Telesat’s petition in so far as it reiterates Telesat’s ITU filing date priority proposal. We include a condition requiring SpaceX, like all other NGSO FSS operators, to comply with the spectrum sharing requirements specified in section 25.261 of the Commission’s rules with respect to any other NGSO system licensed or granted U.S. market access pursuant to the processing rounds in which SpaceX participated. We recently adopted changes to section 25.261 that replaced the avoidance of in-line interference methodology for triggering spectrum division (absent coordination) with a default spectrum splitting sharing mechanism that is triggered when the change in system noise temperature caused by interference, or ΔT/T, exceeds a threshold of 6 percent. However, we note that outside the United States (i.e., when communications to or from the U.S. territory are not involved) the coexistence between SpaceX’s operations and operations of a system that received a grant for access to the U.S. market are governed only by the ITU Radio Regulations as well as the regulations of the country where the earth station is located and are not subject to section 25.261.