The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) rolled out a new Spectrum Coordination Initiative on Tuesday to improve U.S. government coordination on spectrum management and policy issues. The FCC and NTIA have jointly managed the nation’s radio spectrum resources for years. The Spectrum Coordination Initiative involves five high-level changes to…

Members of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee are circulating two pieces of draft legislation that seeks to modernize the FCC’s satellite licensing rules. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., and Frank Pallone, D-N.J., released the draft legislation on Feb. 11 for the Satellite and Telecommunications Streamlining Act and the Secure Space Act.  The Satellite and…

A number of satellite operators and NASA submitted comments to the FCC this week, taking issue with SpaceX’s proposed modifications to its second generation Starlink constellation (Gen2).  SES, Viasat, OneWeb, and Amazon all submitted comments on SpaceX’s proposed Gen2 system of nearly 30,000 additional satellites in its Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) broadband constellation. The FCC has not…

Lynk Global reports that recent pre-commercial tests on its fifth satellite in orbit connected the satellite to thousands of unmodified devices, including cell phones and IoT devices.  Lynk said in a Tuesday release that the tests were done across five countries — the Bahamas, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States — connecting…