WASHINGTON, July 15 — The Federal Communications Commission finds itself once again at the centre of a high-stakes orbital tussle, as SpaceX and Amazon continue to press competing claims over satellite spectrum and orbital real estate. The regulatory body, which oversees satellite licences and the allocation of radio frequencies, has approved both companies’ broadband constellations — but with conditions that have done little to cool the temperature between the two rivals.
Under the hood, the technical reality is that both Starlink and Project Kuiper need access to the 12 GHz band to deliver high-speed internet from low-Earth orbit. SpaceX has urged the FCC to deny Amazon’s request to modify its Kuiper licence, citing concerns about signal interference that could degrade service for both systems.
Amazon, for its part, has accused SpaceX of monopolistic practices — a charge the company has levelled repeatedly as it races to catch up with Starlink’s head start in orbit. The detail that matters is that the FCC has already approved both constellations, but the fine print of those approvals — conditions around orbital debris mitigation, spectrum sharing, and deployment timelines — remains a source of friction.
Amazon has filed competing proposals for how the 12 GHz band should be used, and SpaceX has responded with its own technical analyses arguing that any changes to the existing framework would cause harmful interference. As ever, the commercial stakes are enormous.
SpaceX has won NASA contracts for crew and cargo missions to the International Space Station, including the Commercial Crew Program — its first crewed flight was in May 2020 — and the Artemis lunar lander, awarded $2.9 billion in 2021. Amazon has secured cloud contracts from the CIA and the Department of Defense. Both companies now compete for lucrative government contracts from NASA, the DoD, and other agencies, and both have used the protest process at the Government Accountability Office to challenge contract awards they lost.
The GAO has upheld some of those awards and denied protests from both sides, but the pattern is clear: the regulatory arena has become a proxy battlefield for a broader commercial war over space-based infrastructure. The FCC’s decisions on spectrum and orbital slots will shape not just who gets to beam broadband down to Earth, but which company has the advantage in the next round of government procurement.
What to watch next: the FCC’s ruling on Amazon’s Kuiper licence modification request, and whether the agency imposes additional conditions on either operator. The 12 GHz band proceeding is not yet resolved, and both companies have made clear they will continue to litigate the technical arguments in public filings.
For now, the FCC holds the cards — and neither SpaceX nor Amazon is showing any sign of backing down.
