The European operator Eutelsat set to receive $504M under US C-band spectrum plan
Eutelsat is to receive $504 million, about €443 million, for giving up a slice of American airwaves. It is the operator’s share of a compensation package designed to clear satellite firms out of the way of the next big wireless auction in the United States.
The payout is tied to the Federal Communications Commission’s order to repurpose upper C-band spectrum for mobile networks. The regulator voted on July 22 to auction 160 MHz of the band, the stretch running from 3.98 to 4.14 GHz, and to hand it to carriers short of mid-band capacity. Combined with spectrum already in commercial use, it creates a 440 MHz “super band” for 5G, and the FCC wants the sale done by July 2027.
For Eutelsat, the money is compensation rather than windfall. The company runs the OneWeb constellation in low-Earth orbitalongside a fleet of geostationary satellites, and it uses C-band to beam...
Copyright of this story solely belongs to thenextweb.com. To see the full text click HERE
