07.25.25
How to annoy the FCC…
It’s been obvious for a long time that the quality of AST’s regulatory submissions has been poor, which has led to considerable delays in gaining FCC approval, as was evident when it took more than four years from the time AST’s initial petition for market access was submitted in April 2020 before approval was granted in August 2024 for launch of five BlueBird-1 satellites. I heard complaints on more than one occasion that more professionalism was needed from AST, with contrasts drawn to the high quality and intense focus of SpaceX’s regulatory team working on SCS. And the company seemed to have acknowledged this concern by hiring Jennifer Manner in May 2025.
But over the last month, AST and its partner AT&T have taken it upon themselves to go to a whole new level in causing annoyance to FCC staff. On July 1, AST “urge[d] the Commission to approve the [FM1] Application by July 11 to allow safe shipment of FM1 for its scheduled August launch on time. Failure to do so will place our ability to launch in August at significant risk.” The irritation of FCC staff was clear in a July 2 email noting that “due to substantial changes in the technical parameters of your S-band request, we will need to coordinate new spot frequencies with NTIA. This will restart the coordination timeline with NTIA”. Nevertheless, the NTIA and FCC pushed this through and granted the FM1 approval on July 11 as requested. But then AST didn’t ship the FM1 satellite the next day, and has now revealed that in fact the satellite won’t be shipped to India until August. So why did the FCC and NTIA have to put in all that work over the July 4 holiday?
AT&T’s actions this week have been even more egregious, with an announcement on July 23 (timed to try and counter T-Mobile’s launch of Starlink D2D satellite service that day) stating that “On Monday, July 21, AT&T and AST SpaceMobile successfully completed the first-ever native voice call (VoLTE) and text (SMS) made directly through AST’s Block 1 satellites with a standard cell phone using AT&T spectrum and passing through the AT&T core network.” But AST’s license for testing with AT&T expired on May 30 and the request for renewal has not yet been granted. So if AT&T did conduct a “call and text [which] utilized AT&T’s spectrum and commercial network” on July 21, that was clearly outside the licensed testing period.
As an aside, it’s also worth noting that AT&T has now pulled back on prior claims that AST will support broadband data services including video calls, modifying the website from the original version to indicate only that “One day [the satellite service] may also support video services”. AT&T also shifted from claiming that “Our customers will have access to a satellite-based cellular network with a standard smartphone – no special device is needed” to indicating that “More information on eligible devices and service requirements will be shared closer to launch”.
One potential reason for the delay in the FCC renewing AST’s applications for continued testing is that AST has also simply ignored the conditions of its test licenses, which required the company to “submit a test report in the ELS license file for this grant within 150 days reporting on activities occurring during the first 90 days of the license”. So for the AT&T testing license granted on January 23 (the grant letter erroneously says 2024 but it was actually granted on January 23, 2025), the initial test report would have been due by no later than June 22. However, to date, no test reports have been filed for any of AST’s BlueBird-1 experimental license grants.
The FCC has been accommodating of AST’s regulatory failings to date, and put the company’s June 2025 modification submission on public notice with regard to the feeder links and TT&C. That might even allow for approval of satellite launches later this year if the recent submission of an SCS agreement with FirstNet is deemed compliant. But before getting to that point, the FCC will also need to decide whether to overlook AST and AT&T’s recent violations of AST’s experimental license conditions.
EDIT (7/25): Well it seems like I ruined somebody’s Friday evening dinner plans, because a few hours after this post was published, AST submitted the delinquent 90 day test report for its experimental testing with AT&T and Verizon. Presumably the other missing test reports for the UK and Turkey will be filed soon as well.
EDIT (7/26): If the FCC was mildly annoyed with AST’s incompetence before, they must now be completely furious after AST submitted a new letter on Friday evening, characterized as a response to the Space Bureau’s request for additional information. And I can only conclude that the company’s engineers are total idiots. This letter completely contradicts itself, with the answer to question 1 stating that FM1-FM23 “will be deorbited from 520km through atmospheric drag” while AST’s “additional clarification” at the end indicates that after FM1 and FM2 (which is now clearly intended to be launched on a dedicated Falcon 9 rocket at huge cost), of the “up to 20 satellites” that AST “anticipates launching…through the end of this year…the remaining 18 satellites will operate at an altitude of 690km”.
And if this “additional clarification” is taken at face value, then the current public notice and comment period has just been invalidated, since the comments received on July 21 were based on AST’s June 12 submission, which claimed that FM1-FM23 would orbit at 520km and that these satellites would only carry 20kg of fuel. I’m left wondering if the paragraph on “planned upcoming satellite launches” was simply inserted by company management at the last minute to try and pump up the share price, and no one checked for compatibility with the rest of the document or AST’s prior submissions.
Of course if FM3-FM23 were at 690km then that’s not compatible with AST’s claim today (in response to question 5) that “The nominal deorbit plan is powered deorbit to below 530km”. And incidentally it also makes no sense for AST to suggest in response to question 4 that “During the disposal phase, the spacecraft will randomly tumble due to its shape and mass distribution throughout its descent, except for collision avoidance maneuvers during which the spacecraft will operate with an edge-on orientation” when AST indicates in question 1 that only “approximately 1kg of Xenon will remain available on FM1-FM23 for collision avoidance maneuvers throughout the mission-life and post-mission phases” since that’s certainly not going to be sufficient to stabilize such a huge spacecraft within a few hours and perform collision avoidance. Is AST instead suggesting that after FM2 it will move straight to launching FM24 and defer FM3-FM23 until later? Or is AST intending to use direct injection to 690km? It’s impossible to tell…
This continues AST’s prior incompetence in engineering submissions that was so evident during the review of FM1, when the company claimed that the mass in the Orbital Debris Assessment Report didn’t add up because of “quantity errors in the input” and “omissions” of various components. Then AST just added in suspiciously round numbers of 5000 fasteners (each weighing exactly 10g) and 100 brackets (each weighing exactly 500g) and still couldn’t make the mass of the phased array on FM1 and FM2 add up to 2863kg (an error of 117kg which has been carried over to the June 12 modification application).
It’s now hard to see how anyone can prepare reply comments based on this new nonsensical AST submission. So unless and until these issues are clarified, I suspect the FCC will either have to extend the reply timeline or even restart the whole process from scratch.
