Operational problems with Viasat's ViaSat-3 Americas satellite (see 2307130003) will likely affect the company's FY 2025, slowing growth, the company told analysts Wednesday. It said the next ViaSat-3 satellite scheduled for launch has the same antenna as the cause of the anomaly on ViaSat-3 Americas, and it's looking into corrective actions. CEO Mark Dankberg said the company is still assessing what capacity the satellite can provide, if any.
Satellite communications company Astranis plans to launch its UtilitySat, a multi-mission geostationary orbit satellite, by year's end, CEO John Gedmark posted Wednesday on the X platform, formerly known as Twitter. He said the UtiltySat launch will be part of a Falcon 9 mission that also will put up a pair of communications satellites for in-flight connectivity and one for Peru. UtilitySat will be "the Swiss Army Knife of satellites," capable of multiple broadband connectivity missions using the Ku, Ka, and Q/V bands, said Gedmark. He said it plans to launch numerous UtilitySats in coming years, with use cases including bridge capacity for a customer waiting for a dedicated satellite, as an on-orbit spare, or as an extra, or for providing surge capacity. "We see a future where customers will be able to call up extra capacity on demand to augment their existing capacity needs," he said.
The FCC Wireless Bureau validated SES' certification that it completed its lower C-band Phase II accelerated relocation (see 2307110025), per an order Wednesday. The validation starts the process for the licensees for the 3.7-4 GHz band paying their portion of the Phase II accelerated relocation payments. The agency validated certifications by Telesat, Eutelsat and Embratel last month (see 2306300038).
Globalstar seeks FCC authorization to launch and operate up to 26 replacement low earth satellites. In a Space Bureau application posted Monday, it said the planned 2025 launch would replenish its first-generation HIBLEO-4 system. It said the replenishment would sustain its mobile satellite services including the SOS emergency messaging service it offers to Apple's iPhone 14s.
As the FCC considers using a degraded throughput threshold for spectrum sharing among non-geostationary orbit satellite constellations, the result should be maximum use of the spectrum even through "productive interference" where the cost of mitigation overprotects some users, ITIF said Monday in docket 21-456. It also warned of the degraded throughput disincentivizing investments in better receivers, creating a "hecklers' veto," and urged the agency to adopt standardized antenna patterns that will receive FCC protection. That would prevent poorly performing receivers being a basis for claiming high degraded throughput, it said. And it urged an aggregate threshold that's parceled out among systems in later processing rounds that actually deploy.
The FCC Space Bureau signed off on the license transfers in Eutelsat's buy of OneWeb, conditioned on New Eutelsat abiding by the commitments it made to DOJ and DOD, per a public notice Friday.
Hundreds of millions of devices will be available by this time next year that support Globalstar's Band 53 spectrum, Executive Chairman Jay Monroe said Thursday as the company announced Q2 financial results. It and Qualcomm announced in March they were collaborating on use of Band 53 in mobile devices (see 303070041). Globalstar said revenue for the quarter was $55.1 million, up from $36.8 million last year. Monroe said growth is being driven partly by Globalstar's commercial IoT business and should continue due to introduction of two-way services and products this year. The company remains on pace for 2025 launch of 17 satellites to replenish and extend the life of its existing constellation, said Tim Taylor, vice president-finance, business operations and strategy.
The Committee for the Assessment of Foreign Participation in the U.S. Telecommunications Services Sector submitted proposed conditions for Eutelsat's proposed OneWeb acquisition (see 2207250041). The proposed conditions cover such issues as compliance with all court orders for authorized electronic surveillance and preventing unauthorized access to U.S. records and domestic communications, per an NTIA filing Wednesday in docket 22-404.
The proposed modification of the Kuiper non-geostationary orbit satellite constellation authorization is an Amazon tactic to let it continue to delay launching commercial service while avoiding the consequences of that delay, SpaceX told the FCC Space Bureau Monday in a petition to deny. The modification would change the orbital parameters of the constellation and reduce it by four, to 3,232 satellites. SpaceX said Kuiper's proposing to include two prototype satellites in the commercial constellation is a means of "skirting build-out requirements" and letting it claim it has a built system. SpaceX said Kuiper's proposed reorganization of its constellation needs to be accompanied with an explanation of how the reconfiguration can avoid collisions with other operators in similar orbits. With a Chinese mega-constellation beginning to launch, "just crossing fingers is no longer a sufficient strategy -- if it ever was," SpaceX said. It said granting Kuiper the same authority to operate during the launch and early orbit phase that SpaceX received is fine, as the two constellations are similarly situated, but that also reinforces the need to impose on Amazon all the space sustainability conditions applied to SpaceX. Kuiper didn't comment Tuesday.
The FCC needn't wait for international harmonization via the ITU and can instead lead on mobile supplemental coverage from space globally, with other jurisdictions then able to follow the agency's lead, AST SpaceMobile representatives told an aide to Commissioner Nathan Simington, per a Space Bureau filing Monday. It urged the agency to allow SCS operations involving non-nationwide licenses as long as the applicant can make an adequate interference showing. It reaffirmed it plans to launch its first five commercial satellites in Q1 2024 but said obtaining V-band authority beforehand "is critical" to that.