ICLE Scholar Comments on FCC Move to Modernize Outdated Satellite Power Limits
WASHINGTON (Apr. 21, 2026) — The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is moving to update one of the satellite industry’s most burdensome regulations. Gerald Adams, senior innovation scholar at the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE), offers the following comments on the FCC’s draft order in SB Docket No. 25-157:
The satellite industry operates under a regulatory framework that predates the technologies it now constrains. At its core are the Equivalent Power Flux Density (EPFD) limits—power caps on non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) signals designed to protect geostationary orbit (GSO) systems. Regulators adopted these limits in the 1990s on questionable technical grounds. They are unjustifiable today.
The FCC’s draft order takes the right approach. It would replace rigid, assumption-laden constraints with performance-based rules grounded in actual operations and real-world measurement data. Multiple technical studies validate these reforms, including field testing across four continents.
Those demonstrations show substantial gains: a 700% increase in satellite link capacity and about $2 billion in economic value. At the same time, they leave GSO operations essentially unchanged and subject to minimal disruption.
Updating domestic EPFD limits is necessary, but it is only a first step. The United States should take the same approach to the International Telecommunication Union and push for comparable reforms internationally.
A regulatory framework that reflects modern technical realities at home but not abroad leaves considerable value unrealized.
To interview Adams, contact Jim Fellinger at [email protected].
About ICLE
The International Center for Law & Economics is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center working with a roster of more than one-hundred academic affiliates and research centers from around the globe. ICLE scholars promote the use of law and economics methodologies to inform public policy debates.