Intelligence on spectrum, orbits and the rules that price them.
The Lead: America stops waiting for Geneva
The most consequential spectrum development of the year became operative this month with remarkably little ceremony: the FCC’s Modernizing Spectrum Sharing for Satellite Broadband order took effect on 13 July, replacing the equivalent power flux density (EPFD) framework — the 1990s-era limits protecting geostationary satellites from non-geostationary constellations in the 10.7–30 GHz downlink bands — with performance-based GSO protection criteria of the Commission’s own design.
The procedural history tells the strategic story. WRC-23 declined to put EPFD revision on the WRC-27 agenda, conceding only technical studies in ITU-R Working Party 4A, with no regulatory consequences and any treaty change pointing to WRC-31 at the earliest. SpaceX petitioned the FCC in 2025 to review the regime domestically; the Commission granted the petition and opened its rulemaking in April 2025; by January and February of this year the Space Bureau had already granted SpaceX and Amazon waivers of the EPFD limits for US operations; and the final order now retires the framework domestically altogether, with two provisions held back pending further coordination-related steps.
The significance is threefold. First, capacity: LEO broadband systems serving the United States can operate to protection criteria reflecting modern satellite behaviour rather than 1997 assumptions — a direct uplift to deliverable capacity, and therefore to the value of every NGSO system with US market access. Second, precedent: the world’s most-watched regulator has demonstrated that a state dissatisfied with the pace of Geneva can simply move first at home, confident that the treaty process will eventually be negotiating against facts on the ground. Expect the argument in WP 4A to change character now that one administration’s “study input” is another’s operating national rule. Third, the GSO question: incumbents argued throughout that EPFD certainty underpinned billions in GEO investment; they now hold assets protected by ITU limits internationally and by different, untested criteria in their largest market. How that asymmetry prices into GEO fleet valuations — and into the WRC-27 corridor conversations in Shanghai — is the story of the next eighteen months.
Watch next: the effective date of the two delayed rule sections; the first WP 4A meeting to receive the US rules as input; and whether any other administration follows unilaterally before the conference.
The Queue
FCC licensing overhaul adopted. At its 22 July open meeting the Commission approved a sweeping streamlining of its satellite and earth-station licensing processes — welcomed across the industry, and notable for defence as well as commercial operators, since commercial systems serving the US military require Commission licences. Congress’s pending Satellite and Telecommunications Streamlining Act would put deadlines on the process in statute; the FCC has visibly chosen to move before being moved.
Upper C-band cleared for auction. The same meeting adopted the order reconfiguring the Upper C-band (3.7–4.2 GHz): 160 MHz at 3.98–4.14 GHz to be auctioned for terrestrial wireless — the FCC’s first new commercial spectrum auction in five years — with a guard band at 4.14–4.16 GHz, incumbent clearing by 30 June 2031, and earlier deadlines in major markets. The principal satellite incumbent is SES’s US television distribution business; the sequel to the great C-band clearance of 2020–23 is now formally under way.
Ofcom’s spring framework beds in. Operators filing through the UK are now working under the March 2026 editions of Ofcom’s satellite-filing procedures and NGSO earth-station guidance — the latter confirming that gateway applications are no longer routinely consulted upon absent material coexistence or competition concerns. Quietly, one of the faster-moving flags in the developed world just got faster.
The Docket
Unlicensed spectrum meets orbit. The FCC has teed up a genuinely novel proceeding: a proposal to authorise satellites to communicate with devices operating under the Part 15 unlicensed rules — the regulatory home of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth — in both directions, with a possible “permitted list” of authorised space stations. Early technical commentary is sceptical that unlicensed direct-to-device makes engineering sense; the proceeding matters regardless, as the first serious attempt to graft the unlicensed paradigm onto space services. Comment cycle to follow adoption.
D2D competition heats the tape. The FCC chairman’s public remarks this month on intensifying direct-to-device competition — pointedly crediting the rapid expansions of SpaceX and Amazon — knocked AST SpaceMobile’s shares into their sharpest weekly decline in over a month. When a regulator’s press availability moves a listed operator’s equity, the market is telling you where regulatory risk now sits in D2D valuations.
Geneva Watch
The WP 4A EPFD studies mandated by WRC-23 continue — now in the changed light of the US order (see Lead). Preparatory positions for WRC-27’s mobile-satellite items (the direct-to-device studies under Agenda Item 1.13 and the new-allocation studies under 1.14) continue to harden along familiar lines: Americas administrations broadly supportive of studying satellite use of IMT bands, European advisory opinion protective of terrestrial harmonisation. With the conference confirmed for Shanghai in late 2027, the regional preparatory meetings of the next twelve months are where the brackets that matter will be set.
Value
The Upper C-band order is, among other things, a valuation event: it prices another tranche of satellite-occupied mid-band for terrestrial conversion, and the transition mechanics — relocation funding, rebates tied to altimeter retrofits, staged clearing — will determine what the incumbent’s accommodation is worth. Holders of satellite spectrum adjacent to mobile ambitions everywhere should read the order as this cycle’s template for how forced migration is compensated.
The Long Clock
A reminder of why this newsletter carries its name: every ITU filing runs a seven-year clock from its priority date to bringing-into-use, and the mega-filing class of 2021–22 — the hundreds of thousands of satellites filed at the height of constellation exuberance — begins reaching its deadlines from 2028. The next eighteen months are therefore the last window in which those filings are worth acquiring rather than watching expire. The queue is about to get its first great pruning; position accordingly.
One Number
160 MHz — the Upper C-band spectrum the FCC will auction from satellite to terrestrial use, in the first new US commercial spectrum auction in five years. The direction of travel in mid-band has not changed; only the price remains to be discovered.
The Priority Date is written by Space Frequency Advisors — independent advice on filings, coordination and spectrum value, from first filing to WRC-27. Enquiries: info@frequencyrights.com. Sources for every item are the primary documents: FCC orders and meeting records, the Federal Register, Ofcom publications and ITU documents.