Assessment and Collection of Space and Earth Station Regulatory Fees for Fiscal Year 2024

FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION <CFR>47 CFR Part 1</CFR> <DEPDOC>[SB: MD Docket No. 24-85; FCC 25-11; FR ID 283344]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Assessment and Collection of Space and Earth Station Regulatory Fees for Fiscal Year 2024</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Communications Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In this document, the Federal Communications Commission (Commission or FCC) adopted a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking ( <E T="03">FNPRM</E> ) that seeks additional comments on revising the regulatory fees for space and earth station payors. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Submit comments on or before March 27, 2025; and reply comments on or before April 11, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments, identified by MD Docket No. 24-85, by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal Communications Commission's Website: https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs</E> . Follow the instructions for submitting comments. • <E T="03">People with Disabilities:</E> Contact the FCC to request reasonable accommodations (accessible format documents, sign language interpreters, CART, etc.) by email: <E T="03">FCC504@fcc.gov</E> or phone: 202-418-0530. For detailed instructions for submitting comments and additional information on the rulemaking process, see the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Stephen Duall, Space Bureau, at (202) 418-1103, or <E T="03">Stephen.Duall@fcc.gov</E> . </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Pursuant to sections 1.415 and 1.419 of the Commission's rules, 47 CFR 1.415, 1.419, interested parties may file comments and reply comments on or before the dates indicated on the first page of this document. Comments may be filed using the Commission's Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS). • <E T="03">Electronic Filers:</E> Comments may be filed electronically using the internet by accessing the ECFS: <E T="03">https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs</E> . • <E T="03">Paper Filers:</E> Parties who choose to file by paper must file an original and one copy of each filing. • Filings can be sent by hand or messenger delivery, by commercial courier, or by the U.S. Postal Service. All filings must be addressed to the Secretary, Federal Communications Commission. • Hand-delivered or messenger-delivered paper filings for the Commission's Secretary are accepted between 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. by the FCC's mailing contractor at 9050 Junction Drive, Annapolis Junction, MD 20701. All hand deliveries must be held together with rubber bands or fasteners. Any envelopes and boxes must be disposed of before entering the building. • Commercial courier deliveries (any deliveries not by the U.S. Postal Service) must be sent to 9050 Junction Drive, Annapolis Junction, MD 20701. • Filings sent by U.S. Postal Service First-Class Mail, Priority Mail, and Priority Mail Express must be sent to 45 L Street NE, Washington, DC 20554. <E T="03">People with Disabilities:</E> To request materials in accessible formats for people with disabilities (braille, large print, electronic files, audio format), send an email to <E T="03">fcc504@fcc.gov</E> or call the Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau at 202-418-0530. <E T="03">Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act.</E> The Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act, Public Law 118-9, requires each agency, in providing notice of a rulemaking, to post online a brief plain-language summary of the proposed rule. The required summary of the <E T="03">FNPRM</E> is available at <E T="03">https://www.fcc.gov/proposed-rulemakings</E> . <HD SOURCE="HD1">Synopsis</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Introduction</HD> 1. This <E T="03">FNPRM</E> continues an examination of how the Federal Communications Commission (Commission) assesses regulatory fees for space and earth station fee payors consistent with section 9 of Communications Act of 1934, as amended (Act or Communications Act), 47 U.S.C 159. This examination seeks to develop further the record on proposals that were initially made earlier in the <E T="03">Space and Earth Station Regulatory Fees NPRM,</E> 89 FR 20582 (Mar. 25, 2024), but which were not adopted in fiscal year (FY) 2024. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background</HD> 2. Pursuant to 47 U.S.C. 159, the Commission must assess and collect regulatory fees each fiscal year in an amount that can reasonably be expected to equal the amount of its annual salaries and expenses (S&E) appropriation. In accordance with the statute, each year, in an annual fee proceeding, the Commission proposes adjustments to the prior fee schedule under 47 U.S.C. 159(c) to “(A) reflect unexpected increases or decreases in the number of units subject to the payment of such fees; and (B) result in the collection of the amount required” by the Commission's annual appropriation. Pursuant to 47 U.S.C. 159A(b)(1), the Commission must notify Congress immediately upon adoption of any adjustment. The Commission will also propose amendments to the fee schedule under 47 U.S.C. 159(d) “if the Commission determines that the schedule requires amendment so that such fees reflect the full-time equivalent number of employees within the bureaus and offices of the Commission, adjusted to take into account factors that are reasonably related to the benefits provided to the payor of the fee by the Commission's activities. Pursuant to 47 U.S.C. 159A(b)(2), the Commission must notify Congress at least 90 days prior to making effective any amendments to the regulatory fee schedule. 3. The existing schedule of regulatory fees for space and earth station payors is contained in 47 CFR 1.1156. There are four current categories of space station payors: (1) Space Stations (Geostationary Orbit); (2) Space Stations (Non-Geostationary Orbit)—Less Complex; (3) Space Stations (Non-Geostationary Orbit)—Other; and (4) Space Station (Small Satellites). For the purposes of inclusion in the “Space Stations (Non-Geostationary Orbit)—Less Complex” category, “less complex” NGSO systems are defined as NGSO satellite systems planning to communicate with 20 or fewer U.S. authorized earth stations that are primarily used for Earth Exploration Satellite Service (EESS) and/or Automatic Identification System (AIS). Similarly, “Small Satellites” are defined as space stations licensed pursuant to the streamlined small satellite process contained in 47 CFR 25.103 and 25.122. The Space Stations (Small Satellites) category also includes “small spacecraft” licensed pursuant to the analogous streamlined procedures of 47 CFR 25.103 and 25.123. In addition, there is a single category of earth station payors—Earth Stations: Transmit/Receive & Transmit only. 4. Two categories of regulatory fees were initially established by Congress for space stations fee payors in the initial statutory schedule of regulatory fees adopted in 1993: (1) Space Station (per operational station in geosynchronous orbit); and (2) Space Station (per system in low-earth orbit). Although the latter category was subsequently renamed in our rules to include all space stations in non-geostationary orbit, these two categories remained the sole space station regulatory fee categories for more than 25 years. Over the last five fiscal years, however, the Commission has found it necessary to amend repeatedly its categories of space station regulatory fees for space stations, as well as the methodologies for assessing those regulatory fees, in order to reflect more closely the requirements of section 9 of the Act. 5. In 2019, the Commission created a new space station regulatory fee category for small satellites and spacecraft that operate in non-geostationary orbits, separate from the fee assessed for NGSO space stations. The following year, in 2020, the Commission included non-U.S. licensed space stations with U.S. market access within the fee categories for GSO and NGSO space stations, finding that doing so was necessary to level the playing field since non-U.S. licensed space stations benefit from the Commission's regulatory activities in much the same manner as U.S. licensees. At the same time, the Commission reapportioned regulatory fees between GSO and NGSO space stations, allocating 80% of space station regulatory fees to GSO space stations and 20% to NGSO space stations. 6. In 2021, the Commission again revisited its space station fees categories, this time to separate the NGSO space stations fee category into two separate categories—“less complex” NGSO space stations and “other” NGSO space stations. The Commission adopted a 20/80 allocation between the “less complex” and “other” NGSO space station fee categories within the NGSO fee category. 7. In 2022, the Commission adopted the methodology for calculating the regulatory fee for the small satellite category. The Commission adopted a methodology whereby small satellite regulatory fees were set at 1/20th of the average of the NGSO “less complex” and “other” space station regulatory fees. In addition, the Commission determined that it was appropriate to assess regulatory fees on small satellites on a per license basis, rather than on the per system basis used for “less complex” and “other” NGSO space station categories. 8. In June 2024, the Commission amended the methodology used to calculate regulatory fees for small satellites by no longer calculating it as a percentage of the NGSO “less complex” and “other” space station fee categories, and instead set the regulatory fee for “Space Stations (per license/call sign in non-geostationary orbit) (47 CFR part 25) (Small Satellite)” for FY 2024 at the level set for FY 2023 ($12,215), with annual adjustments there ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 94k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━