FCC Poised to Empower Super-Fast, Space-Based Broadband

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr announced that the Commission would vote on an order to modernize its satellite spectrum-sharing rules—a change that could unlock more than $2 billion in economic benefits for the American people and up to seven-fold more capacity for space-based broadband services. Drawing from the state-of-the-art in satellite technology, the FCC’s new technical rules would revise the decades-old framework for how Geostationary Orbit and Non-Geostationary Orbit systems share spectrum. That 1990s-era framework predates the revolutionary changes in spectrum sharing technology that have been developed in the decades since. The FCC’s new framework will enable faster speeds, lower costs, and greater reliability, representing another step to ensure that consumers benefit from competitive and affordable Internet options.