SpaceX seems to have finally secured regulatory approval to sell the premium Starlink Business dish to customers in the US. On Monday, the FCC granted(Opens in a new window) a license for a “high-performance” end-user terminal for Starlink that can emit a more powerful signal. The same terminal has also been “ruggedized” to better withstand harsh environments. In its application to the FCC, SpaceX didn’t reveal much about the technical specs for the high-performance user terminal. But the license is most likely for the Starlink Business dish, which SpaceX first introduced in February. The premium dish is designed to receive download speeds at 150Mbps to 500Mbps, far higher than the 50-200Mbps download speeds of the consumer-focused Starlink dish.
SAT-STA-20220516-00051Space Exploration Holdings, LLC (“SpaceX”), pursuant to Section 25.120 of theCommission’s rules, hereby requests Special Temporary Authority (“STA”) for its first-generationnon-geostationary orbit (“NGSO”) satellites to communicate with its user terminals operated byits sister company, SpaceX Services, Inc. (“SpaceX Services”) in the polar regions of the UnitedStates....This application requests carefully limited, temporary authority solely to authorizecommunications between SpaceX satellites and user terminals at elevation angles no less than 10degrees in polar regions — i.e., at latitudes above 53 degrees....This stop-gap operation will enable SpaceX to speed deployment of its high-speed,low-latency service to the polar regions of the United States in the interim period before SpaceX’ssystem is sufficiently deployed to provide polar service at its already authorized 25-degreeminimum elevation angle.
Quote from: pbdes tweetForever busy: @SpaceX Starlink's German subsidiary files 2 new satellite constellations with @ITU, in Ku- & Ka-band. Mars-K3: 3,192 sats, 86 planes at 522.5 & 540 km. Mars-K4: 2,992 sats, 132 planes at 522.5, 540, 560 & 570 km. Germany's @bnetza becoming a hub for NGSO filings.
Forever busy: @SpaceX Starlink's German subsidiary files 2 new satellite constellations with @ITU, in Ku- & Ka-band. Mars-K3: 3,192 sats, 86 planes at 522.5 & 540 km. Mars-K4: 2,992 sats, 132 planes at 522.5, 540, 560 & 570 km. Germany's @bnetza becoming a hub for NGSO filings.
Is there any action or information on Starlink V-band application?
Serves 48 U.S. states and over 400,000 subscribers worldwide
Will connect even more people and places with its next-generation user terminals
DISH is mostly complaining about the statements Starlink and Musk made.Quote from: DISHMr. Musk recently tweeted: “Starlink does work on vehicles in motion, including planes, but not yet reliably.” In the same vein, SpaceX tweeted: “Starlink for RVs is available now wherever Starlink has coverage, and users can check the availability map for service areas before hitting the road.” Mr. Musk was not sharing these thoughts with an intimate circle of confidantes and associates. He was sharing them with his 95 million Twitter followers, fully aware of the potential for many retweets. Nor did he qualify them by saying that the advertised availability is an illegal act. And, sure enough, he did not specify that the service is available only to parked or incapacitated RVs, or only to planes at the airport or at the hangar. In fact, he explicitly referred to “vehicles in motion.”[pages of arguing omitted, see the whole filing at the bottom].DISH argues prohibition of use in motion in the ToS is not good enough. It claims Quote from: DISH"the moving earth stations will generate requests for service, triggering Starlink satellite beams to make transmissions that would otherwise not have happened; they could thus cause interference into DBS dishes that otherwise would experience none."They also refer to a reddit thread:Quote from: DISHThese encouragements to unlawfulness have had exactly the intended results. Citing to one of the above tweets from Mr. Musk, a user on the Starlink Reddit forum posted, “Starlink works in motion.”and to a video a Canadian Starlink user /u/MikeOnSpace posted:Quote from: DISHA Starlink customer has even posted a video testing the system while driving entitled “DRIVING with Starlink - MOBILE ROAMING at 80 MPH!”I'm surprised they didn't find more examples.At the end they demand Quote from: DISH"SpaceX and its CEO must therefore place a notice on their Twitter feeds and on https://www.starlink.com/rv stating that ESIM use is explicitly not authorized. SpaceX must also state that any prior statements to the contrary were in error and are being rescinded. Similarly, SpaceX must explain what steps it is currently taking to monitor and limit unauthorized mobile vehicle operations. For example, what systems does Starlink have in place to monitor mobile use by customers? Is SpaceX actively checking for such use? How many customers have received warnings or account terminations for unauthorized mobile use?"
Mr. Musk recently tweeted: “Starlink does work on vehicles in motion, including planes, but not yet reliably.” In the same vein, SpaceX tweeted: “Starlink for RVs is available now wherever Starlink has coverage, and users can check the availability map for service areas before hitting the road.” Mr. Musk was not sharing these thoughts with an intimate circle of confidantes and associates. He was sharing them with his 95 million Twitter followers, fully aware of the potential for many retweets. Nor did he qualify them by saying that the advertised availability is an illegal act. And, sure enough, he did not specify that the service is available only to parked or incapacitated RVs, or only to planes at the airport or at the hangar. In fact, he explicitly referred to “vehicles in motion.”[pages of arguing omitted, see the whole filing at the bottom].
"the moving earth stations will generate requests for service, triggering Starlink satellite beams to make transmissions that would otherwise not have happened; they could thus cause interference into DBS dishes that otherwise would experience none."
These encouragements to unlawfulness have had exactly the intended results. Citing to one of the above tweets from Mr. Musk, a user on the Starlink Reddit forum posted, “Starlink works in motion.”
A Starlink customer has even posted a video testing the system while driving entitled “DRIVING with Starlink - MOBILE ROAMING at 80 MPH!”
"SpaceX and its CEO must therefore place a notice on their Twitter feeds and on https://www.starlink.com/rv stating that ESIM use is explicitly not authorized. SpaceX must also state that any prior statements to the contrary were in error and are being rescinded. Similarly, SpaceX must explain what steps it is currently taking to monitor and limit unauthorized mobile vehicle operations. For example, what systems does Starlink have in place to monitor mobile use by customers? Is SpaceX actively checking for such use? How many customers have received warnings or account terminations for unauthorized mobile use?"
I guess the "real" question is whether it's even technically possible to prevent operation-during-motion.
This application requests carefully limited, temporary authority solely to authorizecommunications between SpaceX satellites and user terminals at elevation angles no less than 10degrees in polar regions — i.e., at latitudes above 53 degrees. This application does not seekauthority to deploy any additional satellites or earth stations. It also does not seek any change inthe technical or operating characteristics of the satellites and earth stations the Commission hasalready authorized, except for this narrow change to the minimum elevation angle observed inpolar regions. This stop-gap operation will enable SpaceX to speed deployment of its high-speed,low-latency service to the polar regions of the United States in the interim period before SpaceX’ssystem is sufficiently deployed to provide polar service at its already authorized 25-degreeminimum elevation angle. This operation would take place throughout the 10.7-12.7 GHz(downlink) and 14.0-14.5 GHz (uplink) bands.
SpaceX warned June 21 that its Starlink broadband network would become unusable for most Americans if a proposal to use the 12 GHz band for terrestrial 5G is approved.U.S.-based satellite broadcaster Dish Network is seeking permission to operate a high-power mobile service in the 12 GHz band, which is part of the Ku-band spectrum that Starlink, OneWeb and other satellite operators use to connect with user terminals.In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, SpaceX said tests it conducted in Las Vegas shows how the proposed network would cause Starlink users to “experience harmful interference” more than 77% of the time.Starlink would be “subjected to total outage of service 74% of the time,” wrote David Goldman, SpaceX senior director of satellite policy.
SpaceX is escalating a regulatory battle against Dish Network for rights over the 12GHz band by calling on Starlink subscribers to petition the FCC in the company’s favor. On Tuesday, SpaceX sent out a message to US-based Starlink customers, asking them to sign a petition(Opens in a new window), which is designed to be sent to both the FCC and US lawmakers. “Today we ask for your support in ending a lobbying campaign that threatens to make Starlink unusable for you and the vast majority of our American customers,” SpaceX wrote in the message, according(Opens in a new window) to Starlink users on Reddit and Facebook.