Matt Daneman

The FCC's proposal to limit mobile supplemental coverage from space (SCS) operations to co-channel licenses held by one party in geographically independent areas (GIA) is getting pushback from some satellite and terrestrial interests, per NPRM reply comments in docket 23-65 Tuesday. There was wireless and satellite disagreement on whether a waiver system suffices or if the agency needs SCS rules. The SCS NPRM was adopted 4-0 in March (see 2303160009) and the wireless industry argued in initial comments SCS rules are premature (see 2305150007).

The satellite industry is playing defense at the 2023 World Radiocommunication Conference against potentially opening some bands allocated for satellite use to terrestrial mobile service, said Hogan Lovells space lawyer George John Thursday at an ABA space law symposium in Washington.

Pennsylvania House committees passed bills on 911 and 988 funding Wednesday, though some lawmakers voiced concerns about the state's means of funding of the emergency call services.

The growing cadence of commercial space launches is facing a bottleneck from lack of available launch sites, space launch experts told us. A plethora of launch providers is operating or developing launch capability, but facilities “are where we started to get the hiccups," said space lawyer Bryce Kennedy, Association of Commercial Space Professionals president.

As the FCC mulls a framework for direct-to-handset satellite service, satellite interests told us discussions about service rules are a relatively low priority. Service rules came up in comments last month in the agency's supplemental coverage from space (SCS) framework NPRM (see 2305150007), but many SCS interested parties were silent.

Foreign-flagged satellites providing service to the U.S. should be subject to the same orbital debris mitigation rules as U.S. licensed operators, FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington said on a Hudson Institute panel Monday. Market access and license equilibration is the "most significant card" the agency can play in debris mitigation, he said. That would incentivize other nations to harmonize their debris rules with the U.S., he said. Simington also urged passage of the Satellite and Telecommunications Streamlining Act (HR-1338). He said creating the Space Bureau was important, but it needs to be paired with formal congressional expansion of bureau resources. He said it needs at least 100 full-time employees, mostly engineers. Absent those bodies, he said, the FCC runs the risk of more operators heading to other nations to get regulatory approvals. Future approvals should be conditioned on retrospective assessments of operators' failures or successes in meeting orbital debris mitigation benchmarks, he said. Noting the FCC has asserted its regulatory oversight over debris for years, Simington said it clearly has authority to oversee debris. Rather than waiting for international consensus on debris, he said, "We may as well wait on Godot." Since the U.S. will either harmonize other nations to its debris rules or inevitably be harmonized by others, "I choose the former," he said. Debris is inherently an international issue, and needs to be addressed that way, said Darren McKnight, LeoLabs senior technical fellow. Much of the debris problem is from large derelict rocket bodies that have been left in space, and there should be a balance of mitigation efforts with remediation, he said. The behavior of satellite operators is more important than the numbers of satellites any one of them puts up, he said.

With the FCC facing growing interest from space operators seeking approval for operations on and above the moon's surface, the agency also needs to update its rules for that lunar future, space policy experts told us. The commercial interest in the moon also should trigger ITU action, they said. The FCC didn't comment.

Local emergency communications centers "are definitely in a crisis" on staffing, APCO President Angela Batey said at an APCO conference Tuesday. Average turnover for ECCs was 29% in 2018, which was up from previous APCO surveys, and it's likely worsened since then, Batey said. Increased demands for public safety services coupled with the low national unemployment rate are driving the problem, she said. Batey said there should be better retention and recruiting, plus streamlined hiring.

Expect more cable providers, particularly smaller ones, to follow Wideopenwest's model and drop linear video service in the near future, cable executives and observers told us. WOW said Monday it will begin transitioning its residential video subscribers to YouTube TV subscriptions starting this summer.

There are wireless/satellite schisms as the FCC tries to put together a framework for supplemental coverage from space (SCS) service. The divisions are over whether a preexisting arrangement with a terrestrial mobile operator should be a prerequisite, per docket 23-65 comments that were due Friday. The wireless industry is pushing for SCS applications to be handled by waivers, calling a rules regime premature. Multiple commenters called for streamlining the blanket earth station licensing framework. The SCS NPRM was adopted 4-0 in March (see 2303160009).