FCC chairman blasts Amazon and its Leo satellite constellation
Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, yesterday harshly criticized Amazon for filing papers opposing SpaceX’s application to place a million new satellites into orbit while failing to meet its own FCC license requirement to get 1,600 Amazon Leo satellites in orbit by July 2026.
Amazon should focus on the fact that it will fall roughly 1,000 satellites short of meeting its upcoming deployment milestone, rather than spending their time and resources filing petitions against companies that are putting thousands of satellites in orbit.
To put it mildly, Carr’s point is well taken. In legally protesting SpaceX’s proposed constellation while failing to launch on time as promised, Amazon is following what appears to be standard Jeff Bezos’ practice, epitomized by his rocket company Blue Origin. When customers begin favoring others because the Bezos company either submits a poor bid or fails to meet schedules, the Bezos companies routinely go to court in an attempt to squelch that better competition.
Carr is demanding Amazon stop this, and focus instead on getting its own job done for once. Carr is also signaling the FCC’s position on both SpaceX and Amazon. It is likely going to reject Amazon’s filing and give its okay to SpaceX’s million-satellite constellation, in one form or another.
Carr is also telling Amazon that it faces some push back for failing to launch the required number of Amazon Leo satellites on time. Though it is extremely unlikely the FCC will cancel Amazon’s Leo license, the FCC might fine it heavily. Or it could impose new limits on the constellation. Carr is also indicating the FCC will treat future Amazon license applications much more stringently.
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The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
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"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, yesterday harshly criticized Amazon for filing papers opposing SpaceX’s application to place a million new satellites into orbit while failing to meet its own FCC license requirement to get 1,600 Amazon Leo satellites in orbit by July 2026.
Amazon should focus on the fact that it will fall roughly 1,000 satellites short of meeting its upcoming deployment milestone, rather than spending their time and resources filing petitions against companies that are putting thousands of satellites in orbit.
To put it mildly, Carr’s point is well taken. In legally protesting SpaceX’s proposed constellation while failing to launch on time as promised, Amazon is following what appears to be standard Jeff Bezos’ practice, epitomized by his rocket company Blue Origin. When customers begin favoring others because the Bezos company either submits a poor bid or fails to meet schedules, the Bezos companies routinely go to court in an attempt to squelch that better competition.
Carr is demanding Amazon stop this, and focus instead on getting its own job done for once. Carr is also signaling the FCC’s position on both SpaceX and Amazon. It is likely going to reject Amazon’s filing and give its okay to SpaceX’s million-satellite constellation, in one form or another.
Carr is also telling Amazon that it faces some push back for failing to launch the required number of Amazon Leo satellites on time. Though it is extremely unlikely the FCC will cancel Amazon’s Leo license, the FCC might fine it heavily. Or it could impose new limits on the constellation. Carr is also indicating the FCC will treat future Amazon license applications much more stringently.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Someone at Amazon apparently missed the news that Joe Biden is no longer in the White House.
In fairness to Amazon, though, its assertion that it would take “centuries” to put a million satellites into orbit is just based on the millennium or two it would certainly take Amazon to do such a deed based on its tortoise-y progress with its Leo network.
Bezos: “It will take centuries to launch that many satellites!”
Musk: “Hold my beer!”
And here I was hoping with NG flying Bezos would have kicked legal to the curb—they sure have been writing a lot for THE SPACE REVIEW, the equivalent of standing on a road with a cardboard sign.
It’s why I don’t donate to no-kill shelters.
1. I think Eager Space is right in suspecting that SpaceX is engaging in PR gamesmanship with their application, that they actually aren’t planning anything remotely like a million satellites. But Amazon took the bait anyway.
2. I likewise don’t disagree with Brendan Carr’s take, but I am uneasy with the FCC chair taking such a vicious public shot at a regulated operator like this (even one I don’t much like). Commissioners are allowed to express opinions, but I’d rather see it communicated privately to Amazon. But what do I know? Loads of people on X are loving it. And I guess it’s on brand for this administration.
3. I also don’t disagree that even so, Carr is going to be very reluctant to cancel Amazon’s license outright; there’s still an abundant public interest in having competition in this market. But there are ways to slap Amazon’s wrists well short of that and yet still allow them a way to continue deploying their constellation in some form, as Bob says.
Richard M,
With all due respect to Eager Space, there were a lot of people saying similar things about Starlink a decade ago. I think Mr. Van Dune is closer to being correct on that point than Eager Space.
What makes me uneasy is that there are still arrogant and clueless twits in major American companies who think they have some sort of natural right to jam up their competitors by begging special favors from government. Chairman Carr has administered a much-needed roundhouse bitch slap to one of the most egregious such entities in full view of the public so as to not only let this particular malefactor know where it stands, but also, as the saying goes, “to encourage the others.” He correctly notes that begging such unwarranted favors from an agency whose rules the supplicant is already in serious breach of – and which is the subject of yet another special pleading – is not a good look. One can only hope the sound of that slap will echo for years in the C-suites of major US corporations.
Absent this completely egregious recent attempt by Amazon to get the FCC to do dirty work on its behalf, I suspect its request for relief from deployment deadlines for Amazon Leo would have been straightforwardly approved. Now, I think, there is a serious question as to just what the FCC will choose to do. The worst the FCC could do, under its own rules, is to cap Amazon Leo at twice whatever the number of birds is that Amazon manages to get on-orbit by the July deadline. If the FCC did that, it would pretty much doom the whole Amazon Leo enterprise. So the FCC will probably not do that. But it might well impose a significant haircut on the total number of Amazon Leo sats it will approve. I think the FCC pretty much has to impose at least a bit of hurt on Amazon to make the point that “if it hurts when you do that, don’t do that.”
Bezos is sitting on a lot of money.
If it had been me, I would have built something like this:
http://www.astronautix.com/g/globis.html
Larger sats, higher up….less launches.
The latency wouldn’t be as good, but the larger the space asset is, the smaller a consumer handset is needed.
Bezos would have worked with Apple, and offered free service just long enough to bleed Starlink.
But Bezos likes attorneys better than rockets, it seems.
Making a million satellites is possible. After all, automobile manufacturers make cars by the hundred thousand. If Starship can launch often enough — they expect eventually to launch 10,000 a year — then a million satellites could take two or three years, depending on manufacture rate.
But that is the future. Today, even SpaceX does not have the launch capacity for a million satellite constellation, so I do not understand why they would have filed an application for something that they cannot hope to accomplish anytime soon. Unless the application is for a system many years in the future, then they are almost certainly premature on their application.
Perhaps Amazon should have let SpaceX go ahead and fall flat on its face, as Amazon is doing now.