Kristian Stout on Amazon’s Kuiper Extension Request and FCC Milestone Policy
ICLE Director of Innovation Policy Kristian Stout was quoted in a Communications Daily article examining the FCC debate over Amazon’s request for more time to meet satellite deployment milestones and how rigid enforcement could affect competition and consumer outcomes in the low-earth orbit satellite market. Read the full article here.
Deployment milestones themselves might be somewhat unnecessary when an operator has made a credible commitment such as securing launch contracts and manufacturing satellites, the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) said. In those cases, the only uncertainty is timing, not deployment intent, it said. ICLE warned that rigid milestone enforcement that inadvertently eliminates competitors may cause greater harm to consumers than the speculative warehousing that milestones are supposed to prevent.
ICLE advised the FCC to keep milestones as a tool against warehousing but said the agency should also look at whether interim milestones line up with current industry realities like satellite manufacturing cycles and launch availability. It recommended a graduated milestone structure of partial bond forfeitures, where missing a milestone wouldn’t result in an authorization’s revocation or suspension. It also urged the FCC to formalize “objective, verifiable sunk-investment metrics,” such as binding launch contracts, as criteria for evaluating whether there’s a meaningful move toward deployment.