Satellite

Reps Tony Cárdenas (D-CA) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) have called on the Federal Communications Commission to protect incumbents in the C-Band. The C-band is currently used for satellite delivery of cable and broadcast network programming to TV and radio stations, satellite radio services, and cable head-ends. The FCC wants to open it up to wireless broadband to help close the digital divide and promote 5G, both prime directives for the commission.

The Federal Communications Commission is required to review biennially its regulations “that apply to the operations or activities of any provider of telecommunications service” and“determine whether any such regulation is no longer necessary in the public interest as the result of meaningful economic competition between providers of such service.” The FCC must repeal or modify any regulation that it finds are no longer in the public interest.

The Federal Communications Commission adopted its first Communications Marketplace Report, which provides a comprehensive evaluation of the state of the communications marketplace. As required by Title IV of RAY BAUM’S Act of 2018, the report consolidates several separate reports to address the state of the broader communications marketplace in one place. And as mandated by Congress, this report will be issued every two years.

The Federal Communications Commission released a draft of the appendices to the Communications Marketplace Report. A draft version of the Communications Marketplace Report, scheduled for consideration at the FCC’s December 12, 2018 Open Meeting, was released on November 21, 2018. The appendices include the data collected and analyzed by FCC staff in developing the draft Communications Marketplace Report.

I’m pleased to note that the Americas region continues to work hard and steadily advance regional proposals for the 2019 International Telecommunication Union World Radio Conference. We are deeply focused on the WRC-19.

I thought I’d focus on what the Federal Communications Commission is doing to promote US leadership in some of the most promising sectors of our economy. In particular, I’d like to talk about next-generation wireless technology and the space industry, which you may be surprised to learn has key tie-ins with the FCC.

The Federal Communications Commission approved the requests of four companies—Space Exploration Holdings, LLC (SpaceX), Kepler Communications, Inc. (Kepler), Telesat Canada (Telesat), and LeoSat MA, Inc. (LeoSat)— seeking to roll-out new and expanded services using proposed non-geostationary satellite orbit (NGSO) satellites. These proposed satellite systems are expected to enable fixed-satellite service in the United States. The FCC approved:

The Federal Communications Commission proposed to further simplify and streamline its rules governing satellite communications. One significant proposal is to create a new unified license for space stations and earth stations operating in a geostationary orbit, fixed-satellite service network. The proposed unified network license would eliminate redundancies in the separate licensing processes for satellites and earth stations.

The Federal Communications Commission took steps to facilitate the continued deployment of earth stations used to provide satellite-based services on ships, airplanes, and vehicles by advancing proposals to create a regulatory framework for non-geostationary orbit satellites (NGSOs) to communicate with these earth stations. The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeks comment on a regulatory framework that would expand the FCC's rules for Earth Stations in Motion (ESIMs) to cover communications with NGSO satellites operating in the fixed-satellite service (FSS) and would be similar to the regime