The Satellite Industry Assn. (SIA) asked the FCC to delay any act...
The Satellite Industry Assn. (SIA) asked the FCC to delay any action on the issue of orbital debris until “a more complete review can be accomplished.” The ex parte letter referred to industry concerns that the Commission might change…
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the rules without consulting the industry (CD Dec 8 p15). “Given the past extremely successful practices of the industry, it was unclear that the Commission had identified a problem that required regulation,” SIA said. It said additional regulation would result in increased costs to the industry in addition to shortening the lives of satellites. SIA recommended new regulations, if necessary, be imposed on a case-by-case basis, rather than be implemented as a part of the licensing process. Non-U.S. licensed satellites asking to serve the U.S. market also should be required to follow any new rules, it said. Separately, SIA, PanAmSat and SES Americom met with the FCC on the same issue. While they recommended grandfathering of in-orbit satellites, they said nothing in the record supported new regulation: “Neither the [notice of proposed rulemaking] nor comments responding to it contain evidence that quantifies the collision risk represented by deorbited satellites today or the incremental reduction risk that is expected to result if operators are required to increase the deorbit altitude.” The parties said that while deorbit guidelines were different for U.S. govt. satellites than commercial satellites, “the cost/benefit analysis for a government satellite, which is not dependent on customer revenues, is different than the corresponding analysis for a commercial satellite which is.”