Voglio sapere a riguardo di…

11884

Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 38 / Monday, March 1, 2021 / Rules and Regulations
station licenses subject to 47 CFR 25.136
will provide greater regulatory certainty to satellite operators planning newergeneration GSO or NGSO satellites with narrow spot-beams and therefore more limited earth station siting options. We do not believe that doing so will fundamentally alter the sharing regime with UMFUS or the rights of UMFUS
operators. However, we believe that the earth station coordination reached with UMFUS licensees should be brought up to date once the earth station is actually constructed and operating. This will ensure that the UMFUS licensees have accurate information on the earth station operations notwithstanding the substantially longer earth station buildout period we are allowing. Providing UMFUS licensees with the certainty of an updated coordination will counterbalance the potential chilling of some UMFUS developments that might result from the extended earth station build-out periods. As such, the recoordination requirement serves as an important check on potential warehousing. Requiring earth station operators to simply notify changes to UMFUS licensees would instead place the burden of those changes, and the risk of non-deployment of the earth station, on UMFUS operators. We decline to shift this risk onto UMFUS
operators, given that the one-year buildout requirement provided underlying support for the earth station siting rules adopted in 47 CFR 25.136. We believe that a re-coordination requirement for earth station licensees deploying in UMFUS bands is a reasonable tradeoff for the added flexibility longer build-out period provide these licensees.
Nonetheless, we note that earth station applicants in shared UMFUS bands will have several options. They may: 1
Construct and bring the earth station into operation within one year of licensing; 2 re-coordinate; or 3
deploy the earth station on an unprotected basis.
We find no basis for treating NGSO
FSS earth stations differently than GSO
FSS or other earth stations included in the scope of our proposal. Moreover, the record is not fully developed for the Commission to decide whether it would serve the public interest to establish a limit on the eligible number of NGSO
FSS earth stations or rely solely on the waiver process. We will consider the need for a future rulemaking on the issue of extended build-out periods after monitoring their implementation.
Accordingly, we will require earth station operators that take advantage of the extended build-out period associated with deployment of a communicating satellite to re-coordinate
VerDate Sep<11>2014

16:15 Feb 26, 2021

Jkt 253001

with the UMFUS licensees within one year before actually operating the earth station. Such re-coordination should account for changes to the earth station equipment or configuration in the intervening years, as well as to geographic and demographic changes in the surrounding area. In order to ensure that the required re-coordination has taken place, notice of the completed recoordination must be filed in IBFS prior to commencement of earth station operations. For earth stations that are constructed and brought into operation within one year of licensing, as currently required, such re-coordination will not be necessary.
Build-out Period. We also acknowledge that it may be difficult to complete construction of all licensed earth stations and operate them on the first day that the satellite is certified as brought into operation, as proposed in the proposed rule. In addition, the next generation of high-throughput satellites may deploy large numbers of gateway earth stations that are not all needed to operate upon the initial deployment of the satellite, given the likely period of ramp-up in traffic over the satellite system. To address the practical realities of potentially testing all earth stations in a satellite system in a single day, and to allow some flexibility during the initial period of increase in satellite traffic, we will extend the earth station construction requirement to be six months after the associated space station is certified as brought into operation.
Warehousing Concerns and a Performance Bond. We note that individually licensed earth stations will operate in frequency bands already included in a space station license. The space station license requires posting of an escalating $3 million bond for GSO
networks or an escalating $5 million bond for NGSO systems. The bond is payable if the satellite system is not deployed within the required milestones included in the license. This existing bond requirement acts as a deterrent to satellite operators without a firm intent to deploy their licensed systems in the particular frequency bands. Further, each individual earth station license application carries a separate application fee. With these existing disincentives to warehousing, the scant record on a bond alternative, and the potential burdens associated with administering and enforcing a bond for many individually licensed earth stations that could communicate with a number of space stations, we decline to adopt an earth station bond at this time.

PO 00000

Frm 00028

Fmt 4700

Sfmt 4700

Nonetheless, we intend to closely follow this issue in the future and to pursue measures, including possible earth stations bonds, based on further experience. In particular, we do not expect many cases in which a single operator files, under 47 CFR 25.136, for more than one earth station license within a given county or PEA, or for an earth station that covers the maximum permitted aggregate population within the relevant UMFUS licensing area.
Such filings may encourage further rulemaking on the issue of antiwarehousing measures. While we defer the question of addressing warehousing incentives until we develop more experience with the implementation of extended earth-station build-out periods, we will consider in addressing the need for any such measures whether to apply them to previously granted earth station licenses with extended build-out periods.
D. Annual Reporting Requirements for Satellite Operators In the proposed rule, the Commission proposed to repeal the majority of the satellite annual reporting requirements in 47 CFR 25.170 because the reports are not regularly used by Commission staff.
The Commission proposed to retain only the requirement for an annual confirmation of the accuracy of the contact information on file and to move this requirement to 47 CFR 25.171. We adopt the proposal in the proposed rule.
The majority of the annual reporting requirements in 47 CFR 25.170 have proven unnecessary for the typical work of Commission staff particular to satellite licenses. In contrast, failures in internal communication or other issues can cause updates in point of contact information not to be reported to the Commission in compliance with 47 CFR
25.171. In these cases, including the upto-date contact information has proven important to ensure such information does not remain inaccurate indefinitely.
We also update the cross-reference in 47
CFR 25.172a1 to reflect this change.
E. Out-of-Band Emissions In the proposed rule, the Commission observed that the default out-of-band emissions rule in 47 CFR 25.202f dates from the 1970s, and that its wording has created confusion among some operators. The Commission proposed to replace this rule with a requirement to comply with an international out-ofband emissions standard, ITUR
SM.15416, Unwanted emissions in the out-of-band domain, August 2015.
However, given concerns expressed on the record regarding this proposal and the importance of out-of-band-emission
E:FRFM01MRR1.SGM

01MRR1