FCC 'ignores' Spacex complaint, waives July 30 deadline for Amazon satellites; says: Strict rules would hurt American consumers as ...

The Federal Communications Commission is waiving the July 30 deadline for Amazon to deploy half of its Leo satellite internet constellation. This means relief to the upcoming Starlink competitor as in January this year, Amazon had asked the FCC for an extension to deploy Leo. In a 125-page filing to FCC, Amazon admitted that it won’t hit a July deadline to have half the satellite constellation operational. The filing went on to add that Amazon has already invested “well over $10 billion” to deploy Leo, “including contractual commitments for billions of dollars to secure launch contracts through Q1 2029.” Spacex had opposed Amazon's request for extension. Last week, the FCC granted the effective extension. As without the extension, Amazon would lose regulatory clearance to launch any new satellites for the first-generation constellation, diminishing its broadband coverage. The Leo system currently spans about 330 satellites, and the FCC is requiring Amazon to deploy the entire first-gen constellation by July 30, 2029.Days after Amazon's request to FCC for extension, Spacex called out Amazon for failing to build out Leo on time. "Extensions are meant to be minor and rare, resulting from unforeseeable circumstances truly out of the operator’s control. None of that is the case here," SpaceX wrote in a filing with the FCC in February. “Tellingly, Amazon routinely opposed its competitors’ requests for milestone extensions and for similar reasons in the past,” SpaceX adds. “Fortunately, the Commission has an opportunity to finally put an end to this gamesmanship by simply treating all of these filings as modifications under its existing precedent.”In this Order, we grant, with conditions, the request of Kuiper Systems LLC (hereinafter, Amazon Leo) for a limited waiver of the Commission’s space station milestone deployment requirements for the Amazon Leo Gen1 Constellation (“Gen1 Authorization”).We find that a limited waiver of the Commission’s milestone framework better serves the public interest, providing regulatory certainty for Amazon Leo and promoting more efficient use of Commission resources. We grant a limited waiver, on the Bureau’s own motion, of the automatic termination provision in section 25.161(a)(2) with respect to compliance with the interim milestone deployment requirement in section 25.164(b)(1).47 Section 25.161(a)(2) of the Commission’s rules states that failure to meet an applicable space station milestone will result in the termination of authority for the space stations not in orbit as of the milestone date.48 Under this waiver, the Bureau will not cap Amazon Leo’s authority to deploy the remaining Gen1 system satellites at the number of satellites launched and operational as of the day of its July 30, 2026 interim milestone. We clarify that waiver of section 25.161(a)(2) is limited only to the interim milestone requirement and does not extend to Amazon Leo’s compliance with the final milestone required by 25.164(b)(2). In the event Amazon Leo fails to satisfy the final milestone on July 30, 2029, this will result in reduction of the totalnumber of Amazon Leo’s authorized satellites to the total number of satellites that are operational on that date, pursuant to section 25.161(a)(2).50 Accordingly, Amazon Leo’s authority to launch and operate any undeployed space stations will not terminate on the date of the interim milestone. Given that we retain Amazon Leo’s final milestone of July 30, 2029, we also grant Amazon Leo’s request for waiver of section 25.164(b)(2), limited to the rule’s requirement that a licensee must meet the 50% deployment milestone required by section 25.164(b)(1) as a prerequisite to its ability to comply with the final milestone deployment obligation in section 25.164(b)(2).51 In other words, failure to meet the interim milestone will not bar Amazon Leo from demonstrating compliance with its required final milestone deployment deadline on July 30, 2029. We determine there is good cause to waive this provision, considering the conditions on the milestone requirement waiver imposed in this Order and Amazon’s commitment to meet its final milestone deployment benchmark required by section 25.164(b)(2).