Analysis · Non-Terrestrial Networks
Five questions about non-terrestrial networks
Altitude makes the first four design decisions before anyone at a satellite company makes one, so the stratosphere, low orbit, medium orbit and the geostationary arc are four different businesses. Only one of them is being built at scale, and it has become a volume business run by a single company. Read the five parts to find out:
- what each orbit buys and what it costs
- who puts cell sites on satellites and what a carrier should check first
- who buys broadband from orbit, at what price, and how much public money follows it
- what a platform at 20 km can do that a tower or a satellite cannot, and whether anyone has made it pay
- what the FCC, the ITU and 3GPP decided in 2026 and what is still pending
Download eBookFirst edition, October 2026 · 62 pages
The parts
Part 01What each orbit is good forWhat does each altitude buy and what does it cost?Light alone makes a round trip through a geostationary satellite take 478 to 542 ms, and no engineering brings that down. Through low orbit the same trip is 6 to 42 ms, and through a stratospheric platform under 2 ms. On 7 October 2026 the catalogue held 11,139 Starlink satellites against 19,408 authorised, and 392 Amazon Leo satellites against the 1,616 that were due in July. Amazon Leo kept its licence on an FCC waiver, but the 2029 deadline did not move.CelesTrak · FCC orders · SEC filingsPart 02Backhaul from orbitWho puts cell sites on satellites and what should a carrier check first?None of the three national carriers mentions satellite backhaul in its FY2025 10-K, and no satellite operator reports what it earns from it. The contracts that do have names on them show it bought for reach and resilience. The only published comparison, AT&T’s FirstNet deployables, carries 64 LTE users over a typical Starlink link against 600 over fibre. The orbit sets a floor under every packet: a geostationary hop adds at least 478 ms to each round trip, where low orbit adds 6 to 42 ms.Carrier 10-Ks · FirstNet · FCC ordersPart 03Broadband from orbitWho buys broadband from orbit, at what price, and how much public money follows it?Starlink had 12.0 million subscribers on 30 June 2026, twice as many as a year earlier, and each paid $66 a month where a year before it was $85. HughesNet fell to 622,000 and its owner, Hughes Satellite Systems, filed for Chapter 11 on 2 August 2026. BEAD gave satellite 21.9% of its locations but only about 5.5% of its deployment money, and NTIA’s July review is expected to take a third or more of those locations back.SEC filings · NTIA · FCC 23-105Part 04High-altitude platformsWhat can a stratospheric platform do that a tower or a satellite cannot, and has anyone made it pay?WRC-23 identified mobile bands from 694 MHz to 2.69 GHz for base stations on platforms flying at 18 to 25 km. Neither the WRC-27 agenda nor the preliminary WRC-31 agenda reopens them. The standards record carries a warning: a 3GPP work item of September 2026 reports severe co-channel interference from a platform into terrestrial cells sharing 800 MHz. No operator has a commercial service or a published unit cost. SoftBank says from 2027 onward, Zephyr’s Indonesian timetable says 2028, and the FCC declined to write rules for the platforms in 2024.WRC-23 Final Acts · 3GPP · FCC 24-16Part 05How the rules treat non-terrestrial networksWhat have the FCC, the ITU and 3GPP decided and what is still pending?In twelve weeks of 2026 the FCC replaced the EPFD limits with performance-based protection criteria, in force from 13 July 2026. It also adopted Part 100 to replace Part 25, which is adopted but not effective. WRC-23 had declined to put EPFD on the WRC-27 agenda, so the American and international rules now say different things about the same satellites. 3GPP has taken satellite access from bent-pipe phones in Release 17 to base stations in orbit in Release 19, on fourteen band numbers, every one of them in satellite spectrum.FCC 26-26 · FCC 26-47 · WRC-23 · 3GPP
The other series
Seven questions aboutdirect-to-deviceTwo satellite operators may transmit on American mobile spectrum, and both rent it.FCC · SEC · CelesTrakRead the series →
Eight questions about6G6G has a calendar with meeting numbers on it: specifications frozen in December 2028, the first American auction in April 2027 and the conference that settles the spectrum in late 2027.3GPP · ITU-R · FCC · SECRead the series →
Five questions aboutintegrated sensingA mobile network that senses is a radar, and a weak one beside a purpose-built radar: a metre and a half of range resolution against the metre the standard asks for, and echoes that fade with the fourth power of distance.3GPP · FCC · ITU-R · filingsRead the series →
Five questions aboutAI in telecom operationsAI is the lever every operator names in its cost programme, and no annual report puts a currency figure on what it has saved.SEC filings · earnings calls · 3GPP · FCCRead the series →
Five questions aboutprivate networks and neutral hostThe shared band at 3.5 GHz was sold as the home of the private network, and mobile and cable operators paid 86% of the money.FCC · NTIA · SEC · ITU-RRead the series →In preparationSpectrum & Network Economics
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