There is a way, which is through buildout enforcement. Basically, if you don't meet buildout deadlines and cover x% of pops within a specific time period, you forfeit the license. It should probably be a lot more stringent and with tighter deadlines, but the mechanism already exists.
It hasn't ever really been an issue with any spectrum that they've bought in the past, and it has only ever been a concern with mmWave spectrum, because the costs of coverage are much higher than were ever anticipated with their tiny effective ranges. Anything below 3GHz seems to get built out and used extremely quickly.
> There is a way, which is through buildout enforcement.
LOL, DISH squatted nationwode spectrum for years and it wasn't until the tmo/sprint merger that they did more than build a single tower in Colorado. I don't think I've ever seen the FCC seriously enforce the buildout requirements since any license holder can say 'but its hard we need more time/money'
> if you don't meet buildout deadlines and cover x% of pops within a specific time period, you forfeit the license
The issue you have to surmount is this reduces the value of the licenses in the short run. Which means less cash for the seller (the public) now versus a recurring productive asset.
The useless response is to decry hyperbolic discounting. A productive response would think through how to design the auction such that the public would prefer to have the productive, recurring stream of revenue versus some shiny thing today.
> The issue you have to surmount is this reduces the value of the licenses in the short run. Which means less cash for the seller (the public) now versus a recurring productive asset.
Well, that assumes the public isn't really benefiting from the products and services that can actually take advantage of that spectrum. Making less in license fees is probably a good trade-off if your phone is faster or you get interesting and affordable satellite services.
What other properties get taxed? Real estate is the only one I can think of. Precious metals, musical instruments, patents / copyrights / trademarks, vehicles, electronics, lumber. . . none of these properties are taxed.
Slight correction cars are typically taxed. Usually in 3 different ways. Fuel, property and tag. Now not all states call it a tax. Not all states have all 3.
I’ve never seen property tax on a car. What states have that? And EV’s don’t typically pay a fuel tax, which wouldn’t be a property tax anyway. Registration/tag is certainly not a property tax.
There’s a difference between taxing ownership of a property and taxing activities you use the property for. The latter includes things like fishing licenses, but nobody would say there’s a property tax on fishing rods.
Alternatively, the aperture of the antenna on the satellite can be increased. So high-gain from space, but low gain on Earth, which is the approach of AST SpaceMobile.
IIRC SpaceMobile showed direct-to-cell satellite communication recently with 5g. Still to be seen if they or someone else (SpaceX?) can make it work large scale.
SpaceX has been launching direct-to-cell satellites for a bit now (a couple per Starlink batch), IIRC they said they need to get to ~300 such satellites to provide consistent service in at least some places. Although, again, worth emphasizing that 'large scale' in this case is still just to provide emergency coverage in places with no other coverage.
This is the US FTC. How are they able to boldly mandate what frequencies are used in space for orbiting satellites given their jurisdiction is scoped to the domestic USA? Would that not be the ITU's jurisdiction - FTC dont set communication rules for the entire galaxy.
I thought the Ku-band user access frequencies used by Starlink was 12GHz down and 14.5GHz up?
As those are the easy to license frequencies globally.
Not to mention, 17GHz is far away from 12GHz and 14.5GHz, so the antenna complexity also goes up.
And the teardowns of civilian Starlink terminals have not shown dual band antennas so far.
It's about downlinks, so, obviously, they're mandating it for within their area of jurisdiction, i.e. within the US. Plus, the notice itself says that this approval only brings the US more into alignment with international allocations.
Was this always in the works, or has recent 'competition' pushed them to speed up unlocking this bandwidth? (e.g. Apple's Emergency SOS, Starlink Direct to Cell, etc)
It's been in the works since 2007 to allow direct space-earth communication in that band, with the big push to allow much wider service coming in 2020.
The amount of spectrum the US military "owns" in the United States is absurd and needs to be adjusted - and at this point the excuses for why they can't vacate are making them look geriatric
Yet another reminder. What happens when you have organizations that aren't beholden to outside pressure
As a compromise, I am willing to add conditions something to the effect of some of the spectrum ceded by the military can be temporarily reclaimed for exclusive in case of a ground invasion on the continental United States. I mean I don't think a ground invasion on the continental United States is likely but if putting language like this makes the military feel better, I am ok with it.
> can be temporarily reclaimed for exclusive in case of a ground invasion on the continental United States
This is a silly line to draw. In an existential conflict, the military gets what it wants. Commandeering spectrum would be a basic part of war powers; we’ve done it before and would do it again for stakes much lower than an invasion of the homeland [1].
So the practical value of such a proposal is in messaging. Given the threshold wouldn’t have covered the attacks on Pearl Harbor, 9/11 or even a nuclear first strike, the only thing messaged is unreasonableness.
Put another way, were I a lobbyist for the military to the Congress, I would want someone to propose this language. Because it lets one brand, with a laugh, the entire effort as being as ridiculous as the caveat.
The US is thankfully positioned in the world where it's pretty geographically isolated compared to let's say for example EU countries. I agree, I don't think a large scale ground invasion could ever be a possibility as they would be detected and get rekt way before even reaching anywhere near the US.
Militaries increasingly use civilian technology instead of developing bespoke tools. For example the military could use some of their spectrum for proprietary wifi but it would be uneconomic.
Starlink already uses these frequencies (17 GHz) for uplink (user to sat). Now they are also allowed for downlink.
Starlink user terminals are half duplex (Tx and Rx at different times) and so could easily support 17GHz DL in a new version. But the satellite is necessarily full duplex (propagation delays differ across users so sat needs to Tx and Rx at overlapping times). Starlink's satellites would seem unlikely to be able to handle their own tx self desense (self jamming) if they used these new frequencies.
> SpaceX ICBM interceptor stuff used to be whispered, but now it looks like it's openly advertised
The GOP wants an interceptor. Musk probably agrees with that. It foes not follow SpaceX is developing an interceptor. (None of their current kit is interceptor stuff.)
Starlink would be the platform for the interceptor as discussed in Project 2025 (Heritage Foundation). The interceptors themselves are probably big primes but a dozen SpaceX employees started Castelion.. Of course it's a Mike Griffin company... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career#:~:t...
> Starlink would be the platform for the interceptor as discussed in Project 2025
This makes no sense—a plane change in LEO takes about as much energy as a launch to LEO. What you gain in proximity you lose in propellant. Interceptors on Starlink is nukes on the Moon.
LEO constellations make sense for sensing—it’s harder to plausibly deniably take out a ring of satellites than an early-warning radar. But not for interception.
> Castelion
SpaceX’s work on rapid turnaround and hypersonic reëntry absolutely has implications for missile intercept. But they’re contributors to the aim and not pursuing it themselves.
the entire point of hypersonic weapons (used for interceptor) is they start at orbital velocities. They use reentry forces to steer. Just read about hypersonic FOBS.
> point of hypersonic weapons (used for interceptor) is they start at orbital velocities
The point of hypersonic weapons is they can fly under the radar, literally, and manoeuvre. (I should say goal, because there is no stealthy hypersonic missile yet due to heat signatures.)
The hypersonic flight regime starts at Mach 5, or about 3,800 mph. LEO is at 17,000 mph. To leave LEO quickly, you need to cancel out a lot of that velocity, and that’s just to deörbit, I’m ignoring that you’ve gone from needing to pre-cool your engine to having to pre-cool your entire interceptor because you’re manoeuvring through the atmosphere with orbital energy.
Orbiting missile defence doesn’t make sense. It’s worse than launching from the ground for space intercept. It’s worse than launching from atmosphere for boost or terminal-phase intercept. If you look at what Griffin is doing versus saying, you’ll notice Castelion is building missiles designed to be launched from conventional platforms.
That’s Griffin talking again. Not the DoD. (I may have missed something. If you have an excerpt, I’m happy to respond to it.)
Even then, he doesn’t really make a case for space-based interception. He just says it isn’t as expensive as it was in the 80s, which is true. He also ends by talking about sensing from orbit which, as I said earlier, makes sense.
Crazy how Trump pitching to revive Star Wars, Musk stating the obvious fact that it'd take much longer to get a nuke to Mars is all it takes for you supposedly smart people to devolve into Jewish Space Lasers tier conspiracy theories. Although maybe that's to be expected from people assigning any credibility to a post of someone calling this a Project 2025 thing based on leading conversations with an LLM.
How is that evidence that Starshield is supposed to be a space-based ICBM interceptor network?
Starshield is SpaceX's millitary division. It is two things, whole military using Starlink, and Space Force building satellites on Starlink technology.
> Not surprising given the current administration opposes some of Starlink's "questionable" objectives.
The current administration is pouring billions into SpaceX sats (Starshield, custom Starlink-like secretive sats for US gov). Also, your link is presenting obvious bullshit from AI chatbot as a fact.
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