Starlink Wins Major FCC Fight That Could Have Ended Its U.S. Service
SpaceX's Starlink satellite Internet service won a major fight at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) earlier today when the FCC passed new rules for the 12GHz band. Starlink uses this band for its user terminals, and petitioners such as DISH Corporation and RS Access, LLC had requested the Commission to open up a portion of this band for two-way terrestrial use. SpaceX had objected to this, claiming that this would create interference with the Starlink dishes. At the same time, the latter argued that recent technological advancements would lead to little or no interference.
The FCC's order today follows a draft order released earlier which had proposed an equitable solution that would preserve the portion used by Starlink and allocate a new spectrum for the terrestrial rules. After years of back and forth between the parties, RS Access LLC and Starlink have welcomed the decision.
FCC Seeks To Balance Terrestrial and Satellite Use of 12GHz Band In New Rules
The fight between the companies was a rather interesting one as it involved a petition filed by Dish in 2016 asking the FCC to restrict the non-geostationary satellite operators' (NGSO) access to the 12GHz band. Dish had argued that terrestrial and other users could not coexist in the spectrum with the satellite services, and therefore the latter should be kicked out.
However, this filing, which came more than a decade after the FCC had initially granted the spectrum's use to multichannel video and data distribution services (MVDDS) providers, was made two years before SpaceX was granted use of the 12GHz ban for Starlink.
As SpaceX, Dish and RS Access (which aims to use the ban for MVDDS coverage) each tried to convince the Commission of their viewpoint, RS Access submitted a new study highlighting $1 trillion of benefits from the spectrum sharing. It argued that new technologies have allowed sharing of the spectrum, and even 2.5 million Starlink dishes across the continental U.S. posed minimum interference risk.
SpaceX had rejected this study and shared with the Commission that if two-way use of the 12Ghz band was allowed, Starlink users could face an outage for 74% of the time - effectively shutting the service down and making it useless. SpaceX had also earlier argued that its significant manufacturing investment in the user terminals (worth $70 million) also stood at risk if the spectrum was opened up.
Today, the FCC put the entire matter to rest, dividing the band into two portions. It preserved the 12.2 GHz band for satellite users and opened up the adjacent 12.7 GHz band for terrestrial use. This decision came after a draft order was shared earlier, which had admitted that two-way use would indeed leave the satellite users with interference, but considered whether existing one-way use could be allowed at a higher power without service degradation.
Before today's order, SpaceX had expressed its support for the draft order and stressed that any mobile users in the 12.7 GHz band should not harm the satellite users in the 12.2 GHz band. On the other hand, submissions from both Dish and RS Access were somewhat muted. Dish "highlighted" ways to make both the 12.7 GHz and 12.2 GHz bands compatible with terrestrial use, while RS Access shared that high-powered use should be compatible with the satellite services.
After the FCC's decision today, RS Access chief Mr. V. Noah Campbell welcomed the decision and stated:
RS Access welcomes the FCC's unanimous and bipartisan vote on how to enable valuable consumer services in the 12 GHz Band. This vote is the culmination of years of advocacy at the Commission and a major step in updating outdated rules in the 12.2 GHz - 12.7 GHz Band while adding over 1,000 MHz of mid-band spectrum to the wireless ecosystem. We look forward to actively participating in the proceeding.
Starlink, on the other hand, thanked its users in a Twitter 1659221400178282496, commenting:
Thank you to the 100K+ Starlink customers who spoke up, the @FCC voted to protect high-speed satellite internet users from harmful interference.
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