On April 9, 2026, the FCC released a draft Report and Order on “Modernizing Spectrum Sharing for Satellite Broadband.” The draft has been circulated for consideration by the FCC at its April 30, 2026 open meeting, and remains subject to change.
If adopted as expected by the Commission at its next monthly meeting, the Order would revise the decades-old framework for how Geostationary Orbit (GSO) and Non-Geostationary Orbit (NGSO) systems share spectrum. NGSO systems, which include low earth orbit (LEO) satellites, are the key focus of the satellite industry over the past several years and have attracted substantial investments from strategic and financial companies given the ability of LEOs to provide broadband capacity with low lag times. The Order proposes replacing important technical criteria, the Equivalent Power Flux Density (EPFD) framework, with modern, performance-based protection criteria. According to the Commission, the existing EPFD framework means that American households and businesses, especially in rural and remote areas, do not receive the fastest space-based NGSO satellite broadband that is available. The Commission finds that removing this regulatory constraint would allow for more intensive spectrum use, thereby bringing greater competition to the broadband marketplace and reducing the price of broadband to consumers.
The Order would extend the FCC’s framework for good-faith coordination and allow NGSO and GSO operators to bargain for appropriate interference protections through voluntary, private agreement. The Order would adopt several technical backstops to protect GSO systems when coordination has not been reached, including a long-term protection criterion of 3% time-weighted average throughput degradation for GSO satellite links using adaptive coding and modulation (ACM) and a short-term protection criterion of 0.1% absolute increase in link unavailability. However, the Order would maintain existing protection requirements for co-frequency terrestrial services and existing coordination procedures requiring the protection of radioastronomy sites.
According to the draft Order, the principal benefit of this modernized NGSO-GSO sharing framework is that new NGSO systems will be able to use more satellites to serve the same area, at potentially higher power, and over a wider portion of the visible sky. This would lead to expanded, low-latency satellite broadband at lower cost, which could increase competition for broadband services in new areas. It bears emphasis that the FCC’s Space Bureau already has granted waivers of the EPFD limits to both SpaceX and Amazon for their LEO systems.
According to FCC leadership, the proposed modernized satellite spectrum-sharing framework will “enable faster speeds, lower costs, and greater reliability.” FCC Chairman Carr issued a statement, claiming that “[b]y discarding last century’s satellite regulations, we could see billions of dollars in benefits for the American economy and broadband speeds many times faster than what is available today.” If adopted, the rule changes would apply to current NGSO licensees and market access grantees, pending applicants and petitioners, as well as future applicants and petitioners.