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A SpaceX proposal to ensure its cellular Starlink system offers robust coverage to users is facing opposition from AT&T and Verizon over concerns it’ll cause interference on their networks.
"Specifically, AT&T’s technical analysis shows that SpaceX’s proposal would cause an 18% average reduction in network downlink throughput,” the carrier claims.
This week, AT&T and Verizon sent letters to the FCC urging the agency to reject SpaceX’s plan for its cellular Starlink system. The pushback risks restricting SpaceX's work on a fleet of satellites capable of beaming internet data to phones on the ground through radio signals.
To improve the technology, SpaceX in June requested a waiver from the FCC that would allow its cellular Starlink satellites to operate beyond normal radio frequency parameters, or what’s known as the “aggregate out-of-band emissions power flux-density limits.”
Despite the increase in radio emissions, SpaceX says its technology would still prevent interference with other networks while ensuring that “consumers and first responders can use an increasingly robust set of features even in the most challenging circumstances.”
“Moreover, waiving the rule would avoid placing artificial caps on the number of satellites that an operator may use to provide supplemental coverage, which in turn would limit the number of end users that the network could benefit,” the company told the FCC in June.
In February, the company also supplied its own study downplaying the interference concerns. Still, AT&T and Verizon are urging the FCC to reject SpaceX’s waiver request, citing their own analyses, which show the interference risk is real.
(Credit: AT&T/FCC)“Here, SpaceX has not shown good cause to grant its Waiver Request, as its proposed ninefold increase to the allowable SCS OOBE PFD limit would cause unacceptable harmful interference to incumbent terrestrial mobile operations,” AT&T said.
Meanwhile, Verizon told the FCC: “SpaceX’s proposal would undermine the Commission’s core goal of protecting incumbent terrestrial licensee operations from SCS satellite operations in adjacent bands by subjecting them to harmful interference.”
AT&T and Verizon submitted the comments to the FCC as both carriers are prepping their own cellular satellite systems through Texas startup AST SpaceMobile. Although AST SpaceMobile is looking to start a beta test with AT&T and Verizon customers by December, the company still needs to stage additional satellite launches over many more months before offering “continuous” coverage across the US.
In contrast, SpaceX has already launched over 100 satellites for the cellular Starlink system and plans to launch the service with T-Mobile later this fall. Still, SpaceX needs to secure approval from the FCC before it can commercially offer the service to customers.
In the meantime, other rival companies, including Dish Network and Omnispace, have also lodged complaints with the FCC about the interference concerns. However, SpaceX is calling on the Commission to dismiss the objections as stalling tactics.
"Indeed, each time that SpaceX has demonstrated that it would not cause harmful interference to other operators—often based on those parties’ own claimed assumptions—those competitors have moved the goalposts or have claimed their analysis should not have been trusted in the first place," SpaceX told the FCC this week. "These operators’ shapeshifting arguments and demands should be seen for what they are: last-minute attempts to block a more advanced supplemental coverage partnership and siphon sensitive information to aid their own competing efforts."