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

<RULE> FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION <CFR>47 CFR Part 1</CFR> <DEPDOC>[MD Docket No. 24-85; FCC 25-31; FR ID 301014]</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> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In this document, the Federal Communications Commission (Commission or FCC) adopts targeted revisions to its existing methodology of assessing regulatory fees for space and earth stations that will be effective for fiscal year 2025. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective on September 14, 2025. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Stephen Duall, 202-418-1103, <E T="03">Stephen.Duall@fcc.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This is a summary of the Commission's Third Report and Order in MD Docket No. 24-85, FCC 25-31, adopted June 5, 2025, and released June 9, 2025. The full text of this document is available online at <E T="03">https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-25-31A1.pdf.</E> The full text of this document is also available for inspection and copying during business hours in the FCC Reference Center, 45 L Street NE, Washington, DC 20554. To request materials in accessible formats for people with disabilities, send an email to <E T="03">FCC504@fcc.gov</E> or call the Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau at 202-418-0530 (voice), 202-418-0432 (TTY). <E T="03">Final Regulatory Flexibility Analysis.</E> The Regulatory Flexibility Act of 1980, as amended (RFA), requires that an agency prepare a regulatory flexibility analysis for notice and comment rulemakings, unless the agency certifies that “the rule will not, if promulgated, have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities.” The Commission has prepared an Final Regulatory Flexibility Analysis (FRFA) concerning the potential impact of the proposed rule and policy changes contained in the Commission's Third Report and Order. The FRFA is set forth in the appendix of the FCC Document <E T="03">https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-25-31A1.pdf</E> and a summary is included below. <E T="03">Final Paperwork Reduction Act Analysis.</E> The Commission's Third Report and Order does not contain new or modified information collection requirements subject to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (PRA), Public Law 104-13. In addition, the Commission notes that pursuant to the Small Business Paperwork Relief Act of 2002, Public Law 107-198, <E T="03">see</E> 44 U.S.C. 3506(c)(4), the Commission previously sought specific comment on how the Commission might further reduce the information collection burdens for small business concerns with fewer than 25 employees. In the Commission's Third Report and Order, the Commission assessed the effects of its adoption of rules implementing the Part 25 licensing and operating provisions and technical requirements. The Commission finds that such requirements are unlikely to directly impact businesses with fewer than 25 employees. <E T="03">Congressional Review Act.</E> The Commission has determined, and the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget, concurs that this rule is non-major under the Congressional Review Act, 5 U.S.C. 804(2). The Commission will send a copy of the Third Report and Order to Congress and the Government Accountability Office, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A). <HD SOURCE="HD1">Synopsis</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Introduction</HD> 1. In the Third Report and Order (Order), the Commission adopts targeted amendments to its existing methodology of assessing regulatory fees for space and earth stations pursuant to section 9 of the Communications Act of 1934 (Act), as amended. These changes will be effective for the fiscal year 2025 (FY 2025) assessment and collection of regulatory fees. 2. The Commission began this proceeding after the creation of the Space Bureau in 2023 to ensure that its regulatory fees structure for space and earth station fee payors remain fair, administrable, and sustainable in light of the substantial changes in the space industry in recent years. The Commission is mindful of the significance of ensuring its work is consistent with such overarching goals because the fee schedule adopted for fiscal year 2024 contained sizable increases in the fees assessed to space and earth station fee payors compared to the previous fiscal year. 3. In the Order, the Commission takes two key actions for the current fiscal year to address this situation. First, the Commission assesses regulatory fees on stations once they are authorized, rather than when the stations are certified to be operational, as is currently the case. Second, the Commission splits existing regulatory fee categories for Space Stations (Non-Geostationary Orbit) into two new fee categories: small constellations (fewer than 1000 authorized space stations) and large constellations (1000 authorized space stations or more). These changes will better distinguish between space station regulatees and will more accurately apportion fee burdens among them, which should result in lower per unit regulatory fees for the majority of space station fee payors compared to fiscal year 2024. The Order also adopts an approach that broadens the base of regulatory fee payors to better align fees with the benefits of regulation and that is less subjective than the current system that allocates fees based on the estimated “complexity” of an NGSO system. 4. The changes adopted support the Commission's goal that its regulatory fees are fair, administrable, and sustainable. The Commission views the targeted changes adopted as a step to quickly improve the assessment of regulatory fees for the current fiscal year, but the Commission also recognizes that as the industry develops, and as the Commission seeks to streamline much of the Space Bureau's operations, that additional improvements to the methodology may be proposed in future fiscal years. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background</HD> 5. Section 9 of the Act obligates the Commission to assess and collect regulatory fees each year in an amount that can reasonably be expected to equal the amount of its annual salaries and expenses (S&E) appropriation. Thus, the Commission has no discretion regarding the total amount to be collected in any given fiscal year. In accordance with the statute, each year the Commission proposes adjustments to the prior fee schedule under section 9(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. The Commission will also propose amendments to the fee schedule under section 9(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.” In administering its regulatory fee program, the agency strives to adhere to the goals of ensuring that the program is fair, administrable, and sustainable. 6. The Commission released the Space and Earth Station Regulatory Fees NPRM on March 13, 2024, which initiated an examination and review of regulatory fees for space and earth station payors that are regulated by the new Space Bureau. When the Commission adopted regulatory fees for FY 2023, it noted that it would be the last year for doing so using the nomenclature of certain fee payors being regulated by the International Bureau. The Commission noted that the creation of the Space Bureau and Office of International Affairs could result in changes in the assessment of regulatory fees for space and earth station fee payors resulting from changes in FTEs, due to increased oversight on various relevant industries. The Commission anticipated that the changes in the industry that resulted in the creation of the Space Bureau would likely also result in changes in the relative FTE burdens between and among space and earth station fee payors. Accordingly, the Commission sought comment in the Space and Earth Station Regulatory Fees NPRM on a range of proposed changes related to the assessment of regulatory fees for space and earth stations under its existing regulatory fee methodology, as well as under a proposed alternative methodology for assessing space station regulatory fees. 7. In June 2024, the Commission adopted an order in this proceeding that 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. Instead, the Commission 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 thereafter to reflect the percentage change in the FCC appropriation, unit count, and FTE allocation percentage from the previous fiscal year. It also determined to assess regulatory fees for space stations that are principally used for Rendezvous & Proximity Operations (RPO) or On-Orbit Servicing (OOS), including Orbit Transfer Vehicles (OTV), using the existing fee category for “small satellites” on an interim basis until the Commission can develop more experience in how these space stations will be regulated. 8. In September 2024, the Commission adopted a Second Report and Order in this proceeding that revised the allocation of space station regulatory fees ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 101k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━