Tag Archives: Globalstar

Satellite Update April 2026

There is so much news and activity in the satellite sector that I find myself gathering a pile of news items each month. Here are some of the highlights from April.

Amazon Entering Direct-to-Device Market. Amazon announced it has signed an agreement to buy Globalstar for $10.8 billion. Globalstar is one of the early leaders in developing technology for providing direct-to-device services to smartphones and other devices. Globalstar currently has about two dozen satellites in orbit.

Jeff Bezos Enters the Space Data Center Race. Jeff Bezos’s rocket company Blue Origin has applied to the FCC to launch a data center in space. The application asks for approval to launch 51,600 satellites that would constitute a huge AI data center. The company argues that a data center in space will complement terrestrial data centers and will give the U.S. the edge in machine learning, autonomous systems, and predictive analytics. The satellites would be placed between 300 and 1,100 miles above Earth, with most of them higher than broadband satellites. This announcement follows a proposal from SpaceX and Elon Musk to put a million data center satellites in space.

Growing Feud Between SpaceX and Amazon Leo. We’re seeing a budding regulatory rivalry between the two American broadband satellite companies. It seems that both SpaceX and Amazon Leo file comments about anything filed by its rival at the FCC. Earlier this month, SpaceX filed comments at the FCC complaining that Amazon Leo is violating the FCC’s orbital space debris mitigation plans. SpaceX claims that Amazon Leo placed several satellites 90 kilometers higher than authorized by the FCC. In a similar complaint, Amazon LEO accused SpaceX of placing satellites too low into its authorized space. Both companies have made negative comments on the other’s plans to create a satellite-based AI data center in space.

Will Starlink Honor BEAD? A group of House Democrats sent a letter to the NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth that raises concerns that SpaceX might not meet its BEAD obligations. The letter was prompted by letters sent by SpaceX to various state broadband offices that said the company doesn’t want to comply with various BEAD reporting requirements. The legislators fear that Starlink will walk away from BEAD, leaving locations with no broadband alternative (although these customers can buy satellite broadband regardless of the BEAD grants).

Failed Satellite Launch. A Blue Origin rocket failed to place a satellite for AST Space Mobile into the proper orbit, and the satellite had to be de-orbited. It was expected that insurance would be used to recover the cost of the lost satellite.

Amazon Leo to Launch Service in Mid-2026? The company said earlier this month that it is still planning to begin offering broadband service by mid-2026. That seems like an extraordinary claim since the company still had around 240 satellites in orbit as of the date of this blog. By comparison, Starlink had almost 900 satellites in service when it began beta tests with customers. At the time, the beta test customers described noticeable gaps in coverage between satellites. What’s most interesting about the announcement is that Amazon has asked the FCC for a two-year delay in meeting the full deployment obligation for its first constellation of over 3,200 satellites.

Environmental Protesters. Residents who live close to SpaceX’s Starbase launch site recently protested during a meeting centered on SpaceX’s planned IPO. The residents of the area complained about the repeated vibrations and pollution caused by regular rocket launches, along with concern about possible fires set in the arid South Texas landscape.

Denied Spectrum Sharing. The FCC recently denied requests from multiple satellite companies that wanted to share in spectrum bands already being used by other entities. As an example of the rejection, SpaceX had asked to share in the 1.5 GHz, 1.6/2.4 GHz, and 2 GHz bands. Other satellite companies had asked to share other spectrum bands. The FCC rejection said these requests were premature and that the agency needs to revise the way it allocates spectrum to accommodate direct-to-device service.

Some Relief for WiFi?

Wi-FiThe FCC is currently considering a proposal by Globalstar to open up a fourth and private WiFi channel. It looks like the vote is going to be close with Commissioners Rosenworcel and Pai saying they oppose the idea.

Globalstar, based in Covington, Louisiana, is a provider of satellite-based telephone systems, but has been dwarfed in that part of the industry by the much larger Iridium. Globalstar was awarded a swath of spectrum in the high 2.4 GHz bandwidth to use for its satellite phones. The Globalstar bandwidth sits next to the part of the WiFi spectrum used for Bluetooth – but there is such a small amount of satellite phone usage that interference has never been an issue.

Globalstar made a proposal to make their spectrum available for WiFi, but with the twist that the want their slice of spectrum to be private and licensed by them. This differs from the rest of the WiFi spectrum that is free and open for anybody to use. Globalstar argues that allowing some large users, such as AT&T, to use their spectrum will take a lot of the pressure off of existing WiFi.

There are places today where WiFi interference is noticeable, and it is likely to get worse. Cisco projects that the amount of data carried by WiFi will triple in the next three years – a growth rate 50% greater than data usage overall. There is expected to be a lot of demand put onto WiFi from the Internet of Things. And the cellular companies have a proposal called LTE-U that would let them dip into the WiFi spectrum for cellular data.

But as might be imagined there is a lot of opposition to the Globalstar plan. One of the major objections is that this would be a private use of the spectrum while the rest of the WiFi is available to everybody. Globalstar could license this to a handful of companies and give them an advantage over other WiFi users by giving them access to a largely empty swath of spectrum that wouldn’t have many users. Having a few companies willing to pay the price for Globalstar’s spectrum flies against the whole concept of making WiFi available to everybody.

But the primary concern about the idea is that it will cause interference with existing WiFi. Today the normal WiFi antennas used to send and receive data are not very expensive, and they routinely broadcast signals outside of the range of the narrow WiFi channels. This creates a condition called adjacent channel interference where WiFi interferes with adjacent bands of spectrum. The FCC has handled this by creating buffers around each WiFi channel that allows for the bleed-over signals.

The Globalstar spectrum sits in one of those adjacent buffer zones and critics say that heavy use of the Globalstar spectrum would directly then interfere with existing WiFi that already bleeds into the Globalstar spectrum. In general it’s never been a good idea to place two heavily used slices of spectrum next to each other without buffers, and the proposal would jam Globalstar spectrum next to existing WiFi. On the other side of the Globalstar spectrum is the part of WiFi reserved for Bluetooth, and again use of the spectrum would eliminate any buffer.

The opponents to the idea have been very vocal. They don’t think the FCC should allow for the risk that Globalstar will create a clear channel for a few carriers while interfering with everybody else trying to use WiFI. The industry as a whole says this is an overall losing idea.

The issue has been in front of the FCC for a few years and looks like it will come to a vote soon. Chairman Wheeler is for the Globalstar plan with two other Commissioners already against it. It will be up to the final two commissioners to decide if this is a go or not.