and then asked for spectrum rights
If you were hoping the satellite communications industry would politely power down for the holidays, pour a cocoa, and stop launching or announcing things until everyone’s back at their desks, congratulations on your optimism. This was the week where the sector did what it always does at year-end: sprinted around like it just remembered the board asked for “momentum,” stapled “strategic” onto everything in sight, and then tried to file a comment period with a straight face.
The dominant vibe from December 19 through December 26 was “proliferation with a side of permission slips.” LEO kept flexing as the place where urgent missions, urgent money, and urgent competitive narratives all go to get louder. Direct-to-device kept marching from promise to policy, with a regulator in the Gulf basically handing out a shiny new hall pass while everyone else pretends their framework was always ready. Meanwhile, the ground segment quietly reminded everyone that space is nice, but your link budget still lives and dies on Earth, where antennas, gateways, and spectrum coordination do the unglamorous work of making your grand vision less of a keynote slide and more of a service.
