With the European Commission's competition review being the last major regulatory hurdles, Viasat said Friday it expects its $7.3 billion Inmarsat acquisition (see 2111080038) to close by month's end. The FCC Space Bureau and Office of International Affairs, in an order issued Friday signing off on the transaction, said existing and new entrant competitors said a combined Viasat/Inmarsat won't significantly hurt competition in the satellite-supplied government services sector and said competition is growing in the aviation and maritime sectors. The agency approval includes conditions on foreign-ownership monitoring.

SpaceX's application for providing direct-to-handset service in the G block lacks enough information for the FCC to review it, Dish Network said Monday in docket 23-135 petition to dismiss or deny. It lacks explanation of how it will avoid out-of-band emissions in the adjacent H block and AWS-4 spectrum, it said. SpaceX labels the application a modification of its second-generation Starlink system, but it's a modification for authority SpaceX doesn't have, Dish said. "It is a cardinal prerequisite to a modification request that there is an existing and valid authorization to be modified," it said. "Because SpaceX’s 'modification' application is really for a new system, it should not have even been accepted for filing." SpaceX didn't comment. The SpaceX/T-Mobile plans got pushback from wireless and satellite interests (see 2305190057).

Iridium and OneWeb had a successful launch Saturday of additions to their constellations, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base. Iridium said the five spare satellites launched bring the number of satellites deployed in its next-generation constellation to 80. OneWeb said its 16-satellite launch includes a JoeySat that will test beam-hopping capabilities. It said with 634 satellites now in orbit, it's on track to deliver global coverage this year.

Foreign-flagged satellites providing service to the U.S. should be subject to the same orbital debris mitigation rules as U.S. licensed operators, FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington said on a Hudson Institute panel Monday. Market access and license equilibration is the "most significant card" the agency can play in debris mitigation, he said. That would incentivize other nations to harmonize their debris rules with the U.S., he said. Simington also urged passage of the Satellite and Telecommunications Streamlining Act (HR-1338). He said creating the Space Bureau was important, but it needs to be paired with formal congressional expansion of bureau resources. He said it needs at least 100 full-time employees, mostly engineers. Absent those bodies, he said, the FCC runs the risk of more operators heading to other nations to get regulatory approvals. Future approvals should be conditioned on retrospective assessments of operators' failures or successes in meeting orbital debris mitigation benchmarks, he said. Noting the FCC has asserted its regulatory oversight over debris for years, Simington said it clearly has authority to oversee debris. Rather than waiting for international consensus on debris, he said, "We may as well wait on Godot." Since the U.S. will either harmonize other nations to its debris rules or inevitably be harmonized by others, "I choose the former," he said. Debris is inherently an international issue, and needs to be addressed that way, said Darren McKnight, LeoLabs senior technical fellow. Much of the debris problem is from large derelict rocket bodies that have been left in space, and there should be a balance of mitigation efforts with remediation, he said. The behavior of satellite operators is more important than the numbers of satellites any one of them puts up, he said.

The FCC's five-year deorbit rule for satellites in low earth orbit adopted in September (see 2209290017) will have little to no effect on large commercial LEO constellations since they all plan deorbits of less than five years anyway, and instead will primarily affect U.S. smallsat and cubesat missions lacking propulsion, said Aerospace Corp. In a docket 18-133 filing Friday on a meeting with FCC Space Bureau staffers, Aerospace said its analysis of 855 satellites launched since 2016 found 45 -- about 5% of commercial satellites -- likely wouldn't have complied with the five-year rule if that rule existed then. The political and policy impact "may be larger than practical impact," it said.

Inmarsat plans to launch three small, geostationary L-band satellites by 2026 to add resilience to its safety services offerings, the company said Friday. It said Swissto12 will develop the satellites, using that company's HummingSat satellite platform. Intelsat said it also will start introducing its L-band capacity and transitioning services throughout this year to the I-6 satellite launched in 2021 (see 2302140005). It said the I-6 satellite launched earlier this year is expected to enter into operation in early 2024. Beyond the I-8s, Inmarsat said it hopes to launch two polar coverage satellites -- GX 10a and b -- in the first half of 2024 and three GlobalXpress satellites -- GX 7, 8 and 9 -- in 2025. Inmarsat last month suffered a temporary outage of its L-band maritime safety services over Asia (see 2304200061).

SpaceX plans to offer direct-to-device service using T-Mobile PCS G Block spectrum (see 2302080001) are facing pushback about possible interference, per comments Friday in docket 23-135. In an opposition to SpaceX's requested modification of its second-generation constellation authorization, Omnispace said the interference threats posed by its supplemental coverage from space (SCS) operations "are not difficult to grasp." It said SpaceX's plans for 1990-1995 MHz band downlinks violate the global allocation of that spectrum for mobile satellite service (MSS) uplinks. It said it would be "extremely difficult" to juggle powering down receivers and transmitters to avoid interference to and from satellites operating on a co-primary basis while also maintaining communications with user equipment on the ground. It said the SpaceX request should either be denied or conditioned so it doesn't cause interference to MSS operators licensed elsewhere or systems with higher ITU priority than SpaceX. FCC rules don't allow SpaceX's proposed use of T-Mobile terrestrial spectrum, and the two haven't asked for the waivers that would be needed to authorize those SCS operations, AT&T said. The FCC shouldn't take SpaceX at its word that it won't cause interference and instead needs to demonstrate that terrestrial licensees including T-Mobile will be protected, it said. Rural Wireless Association members with mobile and fixed network operations in the adjacent 1895-1910 MHz and 1975-1990 MHz bands in rural and remote areas also face interference threats from the SpaceX/T-Mobile plans, the RWA said. The modification application says nothing backs up SpaceX claims that there will be no harmful interference to the adjacent PCS C Block or AWS H Block. In response to concerns raised by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (see 2305050060), SpaceX said the issues it raises are better addressed in the agency's current proceeding to establish an SCS rules framework.

Once the Council of Environmental Quality finishes its update to its National Environmental Policy Act regulations, the FCC will likely review its own NEPA rules, including whether large satellite constellations typically have significant effects on the human environment, Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in May 11 letters to Senate and House Commerce committees, Senate and House Appropriations committees and House Oversight Committee members released Friday. Rosenworcel said the agency, after the CEQ revisions, will also likely review its NEPA categorical exclusion, including whether to establish a time frame and process for periodic review of that exclusion. Rosenworcel's letter was in response GAO recommendations from November (see 2211030050).

With Viasat's $7.3 billion buy of Inmarsat (see 2111080038) getting U.K. Competition and Markets Authority approval last week, the deal should close within the next two weeks, William Blair's Louie DiPalma wrote investors Thursday. In a call with analysts Wednesday as the company announced results for its most recent quarter, CEO Mark Dankberg said ViasSat-3 Americas satellite should start offering service in mid-summer. Noting Viasat's and Inmarsat's existing L-band mobile satellite service businesses, Dankberg said direct-to-handset service is "a really attractive growth market for us." Asked about SpaceX competition in the satellite-delivered broadband marketplace, he said that market today is maybe 10 million to 15 million homes needing service that can deliver speeds that will support streaming. He said that marketplace may decline to 5 million to 7 million homes over the next decade due to broadband infrastructure buildouts. Viasat should be able to capture a "reasonably conservative moderate ... share of that market," he said.

A one-year extension of the license for Spaceflight's Sherpa-AC1 hosted payload craft would allow more testing for Xona Space Systems' hosted payload technology to be used in an eventual commercial satellite-based position, navigation and timing service, Spaceflight said in an FCC Space Bureau application Tuesday. It said one of the key tests involves Xona transmitting in the L band, but authorization for those transmissions is pending while spectrum coordination efforts are underway, Spaceflight said, asking for an extension to June 9, 2024.