The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has recently revised its spectrum-sharing rules to support the further deployment of advanced fixed-satellite services and applications.
In a Report and Order issued in mid-November, the Commission clarified certain technical details of the degraded throughput methodology used as part of its compatibility analysis of non-geostationary satellite orbit, fixed satellite service (NGSO FSS) licensees. Specifically, the clarification adopts a 3% time-weighted average throughput degradation as a long-term interference protection criterion, and a 0.4% absolute increase in link unavailability as a short-term interference protection criterion.
The intent of the changes is to ensure that NGSO FSS licensees authorized in more recent years are compatible with NGSO FSS systems previously licensed by the Commission.
In the same Report and Order, the FCC declined to adopt protection metric modifications or an aggregate limit on interference that were applied in later rounds of NGSO FSS license reviews to licenses reviewed in earlier rounds.
The FCC’s Report and Order addressing satellite spectrum sharing rules is available at https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-24-117A1.pdf.
