By Nick David, Editorial Lead, SatNews
The FCC rebuilt satellite licensing to move faster. At Silicon Valley Space Week in Mountain View, Calif., on Tuesday, a satellite lawyer walked through how the new Part 100 process works, and an earlier panel laid out the pressures any licensing system still faces: predictable timelines and a new Congress.
Part 100, which the FCC adopted July 22 to replace its Part 25 rules, “really represents a sea change in the way the FCC regulates space stations and Earth stations,” Kathryne Dickerson, a shareholder at Greenberg Traurig, said in a Satellite Innovation market brief.
The new assembly line
Dickerson described Part 100 as a “licensing assembly line.” Operators file the main FCC Form 312 first, and she said the FCC can approve it before the rest of the application is ready. Schedules F and O replace the old Schedule S, and a new Schedule B covers earth stations.
Once the full application is filed, the FCC has 30 days to confirm it is complete and put it on public notice. Commenters then get 15 days, down from 30. After the pleading cycle closes, the commission has 60 days to grant the application, deny it or tell the applicant why it needs more time.
An application that seeks a rule waiver or spectrum shared with federal users can be pulled off the line, but Dickerson said the FCC may split off only the problem piece. If the commission is still coordinating federal spectrum use with NTIA, for example, a conditional grant lets the rest of the application go forward.
Operators also choose whether to join a processing round. Participants get spectrum priority, but they post a $10 million bond that shrinks as satellites go up, and they must deploy half the constellation in six years and all of it in nine. Operators who stay out post no bond and follow a looser, ITU-linked schedule. Geostationary systems no longer post bonds at all.
Dickerson said the first processing round, covering Ka-, Ku-, Q- and V-band spectrum, is still expected to open Jan. 1, though the rules aren’t in effect yet. She expects the FCC “any day now” to issue a public notice making the first parts of Part 100 effective. If that slips, she said, the Space Bureau will likely still open a round, just not necessarily on Jan. 1.
“Part 100 is a default to yes, but it is not a default to no regulation,” she said.
Time is the scarce resource
The earlier “Regulators as Capacity Allocators” panel, moderated by Brian Weimer, partner and space and satellite practice leader at Sheppard, took a broader view of licensing. Katherine Gizinski, a board member and former CEO of River Advisers, which focuses on international spectrum regulation, said speed only helps if it’s predictable.
“The very scarce resource that regulators allocate even more so than spectrum, which is certainly finite, is time,” she said. Two comparable companies, one licensed in six months and the other in 24, end up with “wildly different financing requirements.”
“I’m not just saying fast is always better. I don’t think it is,” Gizinski said. “If I know that it could be done in three months, but it might be 18, that doesn’t help me.” A consistent timeline, she said, is what lets a board bound the risk and finance a venture.
Then comes the election
On the same panel, Kevin Kelly, a partner at Actum, looked ahead to spectrum policy in the next Congress. He said he has spent almost 40 years in Washington, including time as a Senate Appropriations clerk. He expects engineers to solve the technical problems and the fights to center on who gets the spectrum.
“Who are the winners? Who will be the losers?” Kelly said. With the Nov. 3 midterm elections approaching, he expects the next Congress to change the approach: “There’ll be more oversight, and there’s going to be, I think, some major battles.”
For Part 100, the next date to watch is the FCC notice setting the rules’ effective date. For spectrum policy more broadly, it is the seating of the new Congress in January.
Greenberg Traurig is a sponsor of Silicon Valley Space Week, which SatNews produces.
About the Author
A storyteller at heart, Nick David covers space policy, satellite markets, defense, and the technologies reshaping how humanity operates beyond Earth. With a background in creative direction, brand strategy, and editorial storytelling, he brings a modern lens to complex subjects and a relentless curiosity about what comes next.
