NGSO Sharing Rules Seen Needing Update, but Consensus Lacking
The FCC's processing round regime for non-geostationary satellite orbit (NGSO) systems "is kind of messed up" because it was built for a world of few applicants and even fewer systems, so it needs changes, SpaceX Senior Director-Satellite Policy David Goldman said Tuesday at New America’s Open Technology Institute event on satellite spectrum sharing. However, the commission's current proceeding shows there's little agreement among space interests, he said.
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Commissioner Geoffrey Starks argued for balancing the sharing of spectrum rights with trying to ensure those rights still have "investment grade" stability and security. He urged spectral efficiency that goes beyond being a good sharer to accurate evaluation of and reasonable definition of interference. "Coordinating around actual interference, and not paper interference, leads to more users being served, with better service, in the same amount of spectrum," he said. Terrestrial spectrum sharing has used such tools as dynamic databases, tiered access models and random access protocols, and satellite spectrum sharing "should be equally forward-thinking," he said.
The days of holding a processing round and expecting those results to hold for decades seem to be over because there's too much interest from new entrants, Starks said. "This is a good place to be," though it raises spectrum rights questions about protecting earlier and same-round systems and how granular government rules should be if the hope is for private coordination instead of the commission having to get involved, he said.
Commissioner Nathan Simington said projects "can die on the vine" without regulatory certainty. He supported sunsetting protections, saying that would pave the way for easier rollout of later constellations. He said U.S. market power in the space economy can lead to "friendly unilateralism," with the FCC creating unitary rules and the nation incentivizing other countries to follow suit.
The FCC is missing the boat in its non-geostationary orbit constellation spectrum sharing proceeding by not requiring satellite systems be good at coordination, SpaceX's Goldman said. The rules currently incentivize earlier processing round systems to be inefficient as a means of keeping out later-entrant competition, he said. He said SpaceX hopes for a further notice that pushes the issue. He said in the FCC's current NGSO spectrum sharing Further NPRM (docket 21-456), the space community coalesced around a few ideas, such as first-round protection and the importance of good-faith coordination. He said many issues still need to be worked out and a further notice might be an opportunity for the commission to drill down on those meatier issues.
SpaceX hasn’t had problems where coordination with other systems was made more difficult by reluctance to sharing information, Goldman said. “It’s not in anyone’s interest,” he said. “I want to tell you where my ground infrastructure is -- I want you to avoid it.” The larger coordination difficulties are coming from different systems with different architectures, he said.
There hasn't been band segmentation triggered by in-line interference so far, but the growing number of satellites and space operators could mean more conflicts and claims of interference, said Whitney Lohmeyer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineering assistant professor. She said the FCC's processing round approach incentivizes filing quickly for the largest system possible because the application can always be modified later. That's inefficient, she said, and alternatives to band splitting for resolving interference, such as tradable priority rights or micro auctions of spectrum, should be considered.
Having spectrum interference protection rights creates an incentive to claim interference, even though it's impossible to tell if the problem is another system operating in the band vs. any other conceivable cause, such as weather, said Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld. Forcing parties to figure it out among themselves can better align their incentives, he said. He said history has shown companies often are too quick to consider certain information useful for coordination and sharing as proprietary and not disclose it.
Panelists also discussed use of degradation of service as a metric for interference rather than noise measurements. “If you are a consumer, you are going to care if my service is there” rather than a satellite’s noise temperature, said Julie Zoller, global regulatory affairs head for Amazon's Kuiper.