Circulating NGSO Sharing Order Seen Getting 5-0 OK

A non-geostationary orbit fixed satellite service spectrum sharing order put on circulation last week will disappoint some satellite operators, but should see 5-0 FCC commissioner approval, an FCC official told us Friday. The draft order, announced Friday, would clarify some details from the FCC's 2003 NGSO FSS sharing order, according to the commission. That 2003 order was adopted 4-0 (see 2304200039). The FCC said the draft order would address some specifics of the degraded throughput methodology that NGSO FSS licensees use in compatibility analyses when coordinating with satellite systems in other processing rounds absent a coordination agreement. The draft order also denies on the merits a OneWeb partial reconsideration petition on the 2023 order (see 2307210037), the FCC official said. The draft order, we're told, adopts the 3% average degraded throughput metric that operators backed, including SpaceX and Amazon's Kuiper. "There is widespread consensus that the Commission’s resolution of issues here is critical to promoting the growth of non-geostationary satellite orbit systems and the provision of services to the U.S. public," Eutelsat's OneWeb said Friday in docket 21-456. It urged rejection of the 3% metric.