Globalstar Opposed to Other Satellite Operators in 1.6 GHz
Iridium petitioned the FCC for access last week, and SpaceX has sought to enter the band.
WASHINGTON, Dec. 31, 2025 – Satellite company Iridium is asking federal regulators to allow it to share some spectrum used by fellow satellite operator Globalstar. Globalstar is not interested in that.
Representatives from Globalstar met with Arpan Sura, senior counsel to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, on Monday at the company’s Louisiana headquarters. During the meeting, according to an ex parte filing posted Tuesday, the company said the FCC should deny Iridium’s petition to share some of the 1.6 GigaHertz (GHz) band.
“The existing Big LEO [mobile-satellite service] licensing framework has been an extraordinary success, and there is no justification for modifying this framework,” the company wrote. “The co-frequency operation of another entity’s system in Globalstar’s licensed MSS spectrum, meanwhile, would inevitably cause extensive harmful interference to Globalstar’s services.”
Globalstar’s low-earth orbit satellites operate from 1610-1618.725 MHz, in addition to other bands, and provide direct-to-device services on Apple phones. After a $1.7 billion investment from Apple, the company is currently seeking FCC approval for a new constellation of upgraded MSS satellites.
Satellite company Iridium asked the FCC in its petition to allow it to share 6 megahertz with Globalstar, from 1610-1616 MHz, plus gain access to an additional 10.5 megahertz of the 1.6 GHz band. The petition was filed Dec. 23 and posted Monday.
“Iridium has made extraordinarily efficient use of its current spectrum, and more would facilitate Iridium’s provision of new and innovative services to its customers and ability to keep up with its competitors’ efforts to expand their spectrum positions,” the company wrote.
SpaceX is buying 65 megahertz of spectrum from EchoStar
The company noted SpaceX is buying 65 megahertz of spectrum from EchoStar and that AST SpaceMobile reached a deal to use some of Ligado’s satellite spectrum, casting its own petition as a way of increasing competition in a direct-to-device market largely dominated by SpaceX.
Iridium said it was “committed and confident” it could share spectrum with Globalstar.
“Advances in sharing techniques and technologies will enable the two operators to share successfully when Iridium launches its third-generation system” that would operate on the shared 6 megahertz, the company wrote.
The company said it was still making plans for the third-generation system, but that is expected the constellation to support 5G and future telecom standards to “provide increased capacity and coverage to cell phones and other consumer products when beyond the reach of cell towers either through a replacement network or a type of overlay network.”
SpaceX has also repeatedly asked for access to 1.6 GHz spectrum, a request Iridium and Globalstar agreed the FCC should decline.
The larger constellation SpaceX envisioned in the band “would dramatically alter the current interference and operating environment that the Commission has carefully calibrated over the years – an environment that Iridium and Globalstar have planned their operations around,” Iridium wrote.
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