Spectrum

Before satellites launch, operators fight for spectrum priority through ITU filings—a bureaucratic race where timing determines interference rights for decades.

SpaceX’s rideshare freeze has turned launch capacity into a regulatory chokepoint, forcing operators to redesign satellites and regulators to rethink spectrum policy.

Amazon missed its FCC deployment deadline by nearly 1,000 satellites—then kept its license anyway, but lost something more valuable.

Launching satellites is getting easier. Building the ground infrastructure to connect them to the internet is not.

The FCC’s April 2026 overhaul of satellite spectrum-sharing rules scrapped a 1990s framework that was systematically suppressing the capacity of every LEO constellation flying today.

SpaceX and Amazon are fighting at the FCC over orbital insertion altitudes—a dispute that looks like a safety argument but is equally about spectrum priority and competitive positioning.

Telesat’s decision to dedicate a slice of every Lightspeed satellite to military Ka-band isn’t just a business pivot — it exposes a structural problem facing any LEO operator that lacks a tech giant’s balance sheet or its own launch vehicle.

Turning an ordinary phone into a satellite terminal is the most ambitious promise in orbital connectivity — and the one most constrained by physics.

As constellations multiply, the binding constraints on satellite internet are shifting from rockets and radios to orbital slots, spectrum rights, and collision risk.