{"id":17499,"date":"2021-09-09T01:03:56","date_gmt":"2021-09-08T17:03:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/amazon-fires-back-at-spacex-in-regulatory-war-of-words-over-satellite-constellations\/"},"modified":"2021-09-09T01:03:56","modified_gmt":"2021-09-08T17:03:56","slug":"amazon-fires-back-at-spacex-in-regulatory-war-of-words-over-satellite-constellations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/amazon-fires-back-at-spacex-in-regulatory-war-of-words-over-satellite-constellations\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon fires back at SpaceX in regulatory war of words over satellite constellations"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Atlas
An artist\u2019s conception shows an Atlas V rocket launching Amazon\u2019s Project Kuiper satellites. (United Launch Alliance \/ Amazon Illustration)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Amazon laid out out a laundry list of SpaceX\u2019s regulatory tussles today in a letter sent to the Federal Communications Commission, marking the latest chapter in a bare-knuckles battle over broadband satellite constellations.<\/p>\n

The letter \u2014 written by C. Andrew Keisner, lead counsel for Amazon\u2019s multibillion-dollar Project Kuiper satellite project \u2014 argues that SpaceX has run roughshod over regulatory requirements, and that SpaceX lambastes anyone who seeks to call the company to account.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether it is launching satellites with unlicensed antennas, launching rockets without approval, building an unapproved launch tower, or reopening a factory in violation of a shelter-in-place order, the conduct of SpaceX and other Musk-led companies makes their view plain: rules are for other people, and those who insist upon or even simply request compliance are deserving of derision and ad hominem attacks,\u201d Keisner wrote.<\/p>\n

This comes in response to SpaceX\u2019s complaint last week that Amazon is \u201cmore than willing to use regulatory and legal processes to create obstacles designed to delay\u201d its competitors. We\u2019ve reached out to SpaceX for a response to today\u2019s letter, and will update this report with anything we hear back. Update for Sept. 10:<\/strong> In a letter to the FCC, SpaceX characterized Amazon\u2019s letter as \u201canother week, another objection.\u201d Details below.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The central issue in the war of words is SpaceX\u2019s request to amend its application for the next generation of its Starlink satellite constellation. SpaceX is already beta-testing its initial constellation of more than 1,600 satellites, and last month, it proposed two new options for placing tens of thousands of additional satellites in low Earth orbit.<\/p>\n

Amazon, meanwhile, is still working on its Project Kuiper concept. More than 500 employees are at work at Kuiper\u2019s facilities in Redmond, Wash. Antennas are being tested, and launch agreements are being struck \u2014 but no satellites have yet been sent into orbit.<\/p>\n

Amazon objected to SpaceX\u2019s latest request, saying that it shouldn\u2019t have combined two potential deployment strategies in one proposal.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo this simple problem, Amazon proposed a simple remedy: settle on a single constellation proposal (as all others do) and resubmit the amendment,\u201d Keisner wrote. \u201cInstead, SpaceX chose a more complicated path \u2014 one that involves misinformation, ad hominem attacks, and a belief that it can influence regulators via social media.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Twitter, for example, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk took particular aim at Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who stepped down from the company\u2019s CEO role in July. \u201cTurns out Besos retired in order to pursue a full-time job filing lawsuits against SpaceX,\u201d Musk wrote in a tweet that misspelled Bezos\u2019 name. In another tweet, Musk joked that the solution might be to \u201czap him on the head with our space lasers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s footnote-laced letter touches on occasions when SpaceX and Musk\u2019s other main venture, Tesla, stirred up regulatory controversies \u2014 including an unauthorized test launch of a SpaceX Starship prototype that ended in an explosion last year, questions about the construction of a Starship launch tower, Tesla\u2019s tiff over a shelter-in-place order during the coronavirus pandemic, SpaceX\u2019s lawsuits over launch contracts and a controversy over the design of Starlink antennas.<\/p>\n

Most of those cases were resolved to allow SpaceX and Tesla to move forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there is anything kind to say about SpaceX\u2019s approach, it is that it has been effective in achieving SpaceX\u2019s goal of avoiding both the rules and any sanction for flouting them,\u201d Keisner wrote. \u201cBut SpaceX\u2019s run of success with this strategy may be coming to an end.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keisner referred to last year\u2019s award of $885 million in federal subsidies to SpaceX for boosting rural broadband internet access. In the months since then, some complained that money from the subsidy program was going to areas that are already well-served with broadband, or to provide access in areas such as golf courses, traffic islands and parking lots.<\/p>\n

In July, the FCC sent a letter to SpaceX and scores of other subsidy recipients, giving them the opportunity to withdraw funding requests \u201cwhere significant questions of waste have been raised.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keisner said the FCC\u2019s letter \u201cprovides some hope that a change in SpaceX\u2019s results will prompt a change in its tactics.\u201d But he also issued a warning. \u201cIf SpaceX and Musk continue to hold themselves above the rules, they should buckle up: they will only draw further protest from Amazon and others who want to see rules applied to everyone equally,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

Update for 10:20 a.m. PT Sept. 10:<\/strong> SpaceX responded to Amazon\u2019s letter by sending yet another letter to the FCC on Thursday. \u201cAnother week, another objection from Amazon against a competitor, yet still no sign of progress on Amazon\u2019s own long-rumored satellite system,\u201d David Goldman, SpaceX\u2019s director of satellite policy, wrote in the letter.<\/p>\n

Goldman said Amazon\u2019s latest objections were \u201cwholly irrelevant to the current proceeding\u201d and called on the FCC to put SpaceX\u2019s application out for comment from all members of the public, \u201cincluding Amazon\u2019s legion of lobbyists and lawyers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Viasat filed its own objections to SpaceX\u2019s doubled-up request for an amendment to its license and said Amazon\u2019s Project Kuiper \u201chas correctly noted that this request is fundamentally inconsistent\u201d with the FCC\u2019s rules.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An artist\u2019s conception shows an Atlas V rocket launching Amazon\u2019s Project Kuiper satellites. (United Launch Alliance \/ Amazon Illustration) Amazon laid out out a laundry list of SpaceX\u2019s regulatory tussles today in a letter sent to the Federal Communications Commission, marking the latest chapter in a bare-knuckles battle over broadband satellite constellations. The letter \u2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[275,252,277,1720,962,20,4336,442,316,440],"class_list":["post-17499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-amazon","tag-broadband","tag-fcc","tag-federal-communications-commission","tag-project-kuiper","tag-satellite","tag-satellite-broadband","tag-satellites","tag-spacex","tag-starlink"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17499"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17499\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}