§25.121. License term and renewals. — Inbound Citations

(d) The license term for each digital audio radio service satellite and any associated terrestrial repeaters is specified in § 25.121.

(a) License terms for DBS facilities are specified in § 25.121(a).

(d) Prior to commencing operations, an NGSO FSS licensee or market access recipient must either certify that it has completed a coordination agreement with any operational NGSO FSS system licensed or granted U.S. market access in an earlier processing round, or submit for Commission approval a compatibility showing which demonstrates by use of a degraded throughput methodology that it will not cause harmful interference to any such system with which coordination has not been completed. If an earlier-round system becomes operational after a later-round system has commenced operations, the later-round licensee or market access recipient must submit a certification of coordination or a compatibility showing with respect to the earlier-round system no later than 60 days after the earlier-round system commences operations as notified pursuant to § 25.121(b) or otherwise.

(1) Compatibility showings must contain the following elements:

(i) A demonstration that the later-round system will cause no more than 3 percent time-weighted average degraded throughput of the link to the earlier-round system, for links with a baseline link availability of 99.0 percent or higher at a C/N threshold of 0 dB;

(ii) A demonstration that the later-round system will cause no more than 0.4 percent absolute change in link availability to the earlier-round system using a C/N threshold value of 0 dB, for links with a baseline link availability of 99.0 percent link availability or higher; and

(iii) With respect to an earlier-round system that has not yet satisfied its 50 percent deployment milestone pursuant to § 25.164(b)(1), the compatibility showing may consider only 50 percent deployment of the earlier-round system; if the 50 percent deployment milestone has been satisfied, the showing must consider 100 percent deployment of the authorized system.

(2) Compatibility showings will be placed on public notice pursuant to § 25.151(a)(13).

(3) While a compatibility showing remains pending before the Commission, the submitting NGSO FSS licensee or market access recipient may commence operations on an unprotected, non-interference basis with respect to the operations of the system that is the subject of the showing.

(4) A later-round NGSO FSS system will be required to conform its operations to its compatibility showing submitted for the protection of an earlier-round system to the extent necessary to protect the actual number of deployed and operating space stations of the earlier-round system.

(f) A licensee subject to the requirements in paragraph (a) or (b) of this section must either demonstrate compliance with the applicable requirement or notify the Commission in writing that the requirement was not met, within 15 days after the specified deadline. Compliance with a milestone requirement in paragraph (a) or (b) of this section may be demonstrated by certifying pursuant to § 25.121(d) that the space station(s) in question, has, or have, been launched and placed in the authorized orbital location or non-geostationary orbit(s) and that in-orbit operation of the space station or stations has been tested and found to be consistent with the terms of the authorization.

(b) The expiration of the license term, unless, in the case of an earth station license, an application for renewal of the license has been filed with the Commission pursuant to § 25.121(e) or, in the case of a space station license, an application for extension of the license term has been filed with the Commission; or