Satellite Industry Intelligence Since 1983
The commercial satellite communications sector has reached a structural turning point. The assumption of a borderless sky, where global mesh networks and technical neutrality defined market access, no longer holds. The industry has entered a new phase in which states intervene directly to enforce what amounts to orbital sovereignty.
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Dispatch from SmallSat Symposium. Dr. Jay Schwarz, Chief of the FCC Space Bureau, delivered a direct message to the industry during the Navigating Global Space Regulations session this afternoon. The Bureau is pivoting its operational philosophy from adjudication to mass production.
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Dispatch from SmallSat Symposium. With over 14,000 satellites in orbit and filings for hundreds of thousands more flooding the International Telecommunication Union [ITU], the industry has hit a wall. Success is no longer determined by who can launch the fastest. Instead, it depends on who can find a clear frequency to talk back to Earth without being drowned out by the noise.
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In Part 2 of this series, we examine the second bottleneck facing the Orbital Data Center (ODC) : Data Gravity. We will explore why moving exabytes to and from orbit is harder than processing them, and how this specific constraint fractures the market into two mutually exclusive compute types: the high-speed "Real-Time Reduction Hub" and the massive "Batch Trainer." We will also examine other computing challenges unique to space.
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This is the second in a continuing series on the strategic evolution of space regulation. Part one, “The 200,000-Satellite Filing: When Commercial Loopholes Become State Weapons,” examined how speculative filings distort global coordination. Part two examines the U.S. regulatory response.
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WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Wednesday, January 14, 2026, U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Senator Peter Welch (D-Vermont) introduced the Satellite and Telecommunications Streamlining Act. The bipartisan […]
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SatNews Editorial Analysis Executive Summary The Event: The FCC’s December 16, 2025, grant of the SpaceX/T-Mobile Supplemental Coverage from Space (SCS) license officially graduated Direct-to-Device (D2D) from a beta experiment […]
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By Evan Grey, Legal Contributor, SatNews For decades, the satellite industry operated under a coordination framework designed to manage interference through established ITU and FCC procedures. As of today, January […]
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Globalstar executives met with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) leadership on Monday to advocate for the approval of its third-generation "C-3" mobile satellite service (MSS) system and to urge the regulator to protect the Big LEO spectrum band from competing proposals.
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In Washington, modernization is usually a euphemism for forming a committee to study a problem. For FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, it appears to be a euphemism for a demolition crew. In a statement released Tuesday, Carr summarized his first year at the helm with a metric that matters more than any policy speech: the Space Bureau processed 3,418 applications in 2025, a 21% increase over the previous year, effectively cutting the agency’s notorious backlog in half.
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