Summary

  • The FCC approved the transfer of three unbuilt, uplink-only AWS-3 licences from Tristar's TLG Unpaired Holdings to a SpaceX subsidiary.
  • It waived terrestrial buildout rules for this deal and set three satellite uplink performance milestones, technical proof requirements and automatic termination after a failed final buildout.

The tower on the old licence timetable never went up. The FCC's 21 October order now puts a different object on the calendar: a working satellite uplink, measured at the weak end of user performance rather than illustrated in a launch presentation.

The assets are specific. They are three unpaired AWS-3 licences in the 1695–1710 MHz band, covering three Economic Areas, 62 counties in eight US states and roughly 4% of the population. TLG Unpaired Holdings, controlled by Tristar, holds them today. Starlink Spectrum Holdings, a SpaceX subsidiary, would control them when the approved transaction closes.

The FCC waived terrestrial construction, renewal and certain service-discontinuance conditions that would otherwise follow the licences. Those waivers belong to this transaction. If it fails to close, they expire for Tristar and TLG. In their place the agency attached satellite direct-to-device performance conditions. Because this is uplink-only spectrum, the order tests the phone-to-satellite direction alone.

The measuring stick grows. Two years after 30 November 2027, the fifth-percentile user uplink must reach at least 100 kbps per MHz across 90% of the licensed geography with 70% time availability. At four years, it rises to 200 kbps/MHz and 80% availability. At nine years, 300 kbps/MHz and 90%. The geography stays at 90%. Separate spectral-efficiency thresholds apply at the first and final milestones.

Paperwork here has teeth. SpaceX must file a construction notice within 30 days of each milestone, with a technical account, link budget and electronic coverage maps. A measurement plan is due at least nine months before the first milestone; verification data follows within six months after each one. Missing an interim target pulls the final deadline forward by one year for the first miss and two for the second, cumulatively. Failure of all final buildout requirements ends the affected licence area automatically, and SpaceX cannot win it back in a later relicense.

That is the bargain: dormant spectrum may leave a tower-shaped obligation, but its new use must produce a phone-shaped receipt. The first serious evidence will be the measurement plan and the first filing, not a rendering of a satellite.

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