FCC ORBIT Act Report Leaves Door Open for FSS Market Examination
The FCC left the door open to further action on complaints of a dysfunctional fixed-satellite services (FSS) marketplace, in its report to Congress on the Open-Market Reorganization for the Betterment of International Telecommunications (ORBIT) Act. The report referenced Globecomm, Artel, CapRock, and Spacenet’s filings saying the FSS market is flawed and Intelsat uses anticompetitive behavior to win contracts and dictate leasing prices, but the report doesn’t propose any specific action. The ORBIT Act requires the FCC to provide annual reports to the House and Senate Commerce and Foreign Relations committees on the effect of the privatization of Intelsat and Inmarsat.
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"Going forward, the commission will consider the appropriate options for addressing those issues raised by the commenting parties and Intelsat that are within our jurisdiction under the ORBIT Act and other laws,” the report said. “In the interim, the Commission will continue to implement and enforce the requirements of the ORBIT Act.” Otherwise, the report only mentions the anticompetitive allegations in a summary of the filed comments and their proposals. Intelsat didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The commissioners tweaked some of the language before the report went out, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell told us in an interview. McDowell said more evidence would facilitate closer examination of the anticompetitive claims. “I would love, as I do in any case where there’s an allegation of a lack of competition or insufficient competition or anticompetitive conduct, for the parties to bring us hard evidence of that that we can examine,” he said. “It’s hard for us to address those issues without being able to very specifically diagnose what the illness is. I'm hopeful we will have those proceedings where folks will have that opportunity, but even if we don’t have a proceeding they can still present us with hard evidence."
The “appropriate options” referenced in the report remain unclear, though industry and FCC officials have said the competitive complaints could be taken up more directly in the International Bureau’s annual satellite competition report.