Airline Rebates Could Reach $5.7 Billion After Upper C-Band Auction
Satellite companies could get an extra $6.3 billion for clearing the band quickly
WASHINGTON, July 27, 2026 – Airlines could get up to $5.7 billion to carry out gear replacements made necessary by a spectrum auction next year.
The Federal Communications Commission said it expected rebates, to be paid by auction winners, to total between $3.83 billion and $5.71 billion. That will go toward replacing altimeters, vital components that measure an airplane’s altitude, with newer units that can handle more interference from adjacent bands.
The FCC is set to auction 160 megahertz in the upper C-band next year after approving its plan July 22. It’s proposing to start bidding April 27, 2027.
The agency released the text of the adopted order Friday.
The Federal Aviation Administration, which is conducting a parallel rulemaking on the altimeter transition, said in its own order that it estimated similar amounts being disbursed. About 58,000 pieces of gear will need to be replaced, at between $80,000 and $120,000 a piece.
Domestic and foreign passenger aircraft will need to complete their upgrades by the end of 2030, while other cargo and military planes get an additional four years. That should be enough for the mobile carriers to light up the band in large markets in late 2030, according to the FCC.
The FCC estimated the first group would get $2.21 billion, and said the second would get a maximum of $3.5 billion. There’s no cap on the first group, given “the more finite universe of potential claimants,” the order said.
The major U.S. airlines had asked for spare altimeters to be eligible for rebates, something the agency didn’t opt to include in the final order.
Satellite incentives
Airlines aren’t the only ones who have to make some changes to accommodate mobile use in the band. Satellite companies that use the airwaves for video distribution services also have to pack their systems further or move to new spectrum altogether.
Those satellite companies are set to receive a total of $6.3 billion in incentive payments if they clear the band by the end of 2030 or mid-2031, depending on the size of the market. That’s in addition to the $4 billion to $5 billion in relocation cost reimbursements they’ll receive.
SES, the largest incumbent after its acquisition of Intelsat last year, is set to receive the largest incentive payment at $5.6 billion.
Eutelsat is in line for $500 million, and Telesat could get $189 million.
SES and Eutelsat had put forward different methodologies for allocating the acceleration payments, each giving themselves larger portions of the funding. The FCC rejected both, but its methodology also strongly favored SES.
SES CEO Adel Al-Saleh thanked Carr in a statement for setting payments that “appropriately recognize the critical role SES will play” in the transition.
The company said its own costs will total $3.6 billion, much of which will go toward launching new satellites using different spectrum. Eutelsat expects it will spend $750 million.
Other lobbying
The FCC declined to make many of the changes sought by parties that clamored for commissioner and staff meetings ahead of the July 22 vote.
Tribal organizations and advocacy groups had asked for a Tribal licensing window for the auction, like the FCC did prior to its 2.5 GigaHertz (GHz) auction in the first Trump administration.
The agency declined, leading Democratic FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez to partially dissent from the order. But the adopted text did not find that Tribal windows were unlikely to be instituted in future auctions, something the advocates had asked the agency to take out of the draft.
The FCC also deferred making a decision on whether or how to incorporate satellite use in the upper C-band, which SpaceX had asked the agency to allow.
The cable industry and other users of shared Citizens Broadband Radio Service spectrum had asked the agency to change course on a provision that would allow higher power in the lower C-band. They feared interference with CBRS gear.
The FCC still upped the allowed power, but only to half the levels the agency originally contemplated. It said it was doing so out of “an abundance of caution,” despite criticizing the concerned parties as lacking a detailed analysis to support their claims.
