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Earlier this year, Space Exploration Technologies Corp.’s (SpaceX) Starlink satellite internet constellation won a major battle after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) accepted the company’s third modification to its Starlink satellite-based internet network. The victory came after SpaceX’s director of satellite policy, Mr. David Goldman, agreed to DISH Corporation’s demand that SpaceX modifies its licensing agreement to reflect technical limitations for preventing Starlink interference to DISH’s customers.

Under the old FCC rules, a satellite ground station needs to be built within one year after its license is granted. At the same time, a satellite constellation has a longer buildout period of five or six years, depending on its orbital altitude. In its 2018 notice of rulemaking, the Commission noted that this carries the potential to waste investment in the ground station as it waits for its corresponding satellite constellation to become operational.

More than two years after the rulemaing notice, the FCC released an order which consolidated the licensing procedure for satellites and ground stations. Three months after this, SpaceX expressed its reservation with the unification. It argued that the fundamental difference between geostationary and non-geostationary satellites would increase the time it took for satellite internet to be made available to the American public.

SpaceX’s rationale outlined that when compared to their non-geostationary (NGSO) counterparts, the geostationary satellites (GSO) require fewer ground stations to operate. As a result, it argued that the risk of operators ’locking-in’ ground stations while building their constellations was higher for NGSO satellites, and it “could affect hundreds of gateway sites.”

It continued by stating that the Commission’s argument of the multi-million surety bond, which operators stand to lose if they do not deploy their satellite constellations, does not apply to ground stations and that a reduction of ground station application fee to $360 from $2985 further reduced the risk of financial loss to NGSO operators who secured licenses without ever intending to use them, or for simply slowing down the network rollout of other services (such as Starlink).

It outlined that SpaceX’s petition for reconsideration did not bring any new facts to light and that the new rule allows satellite operators to design their systems more effectively by involving the ground stations in the process. It also argued that “The time investment and considerable costs of obtaining a license outweigh any arguable benefit from warehousing earth station sites.”