AST SpaceMobile’s attempt to justify its use of the amateur radio band for its satellites has done little to assuage concerns from the ham radio community.
“AST is again economical with the truth,” an amateur radio operator in Germany named Mario Lorenz wrote to the FCC on Friday.
AST SpaceMobile wants to use the 430 to 440MHz bands outside the US to control and track its constellation of 248 satellites, which promise to beam cellular connectivity to smartphones across the globe. However, these bands have long been allocated to amateur radio operations, raising fears that AST’s operations will create widespread interference.
(Credit: AST SpaceMobile)
On Tuesday, Texas-based AST defended using the radio band, telling the FCC that any radio interference should be minimal. It would use the 430 to 440MHz band for “very limited, non-routine” use, such as for “emergency operations when other frequency bands are unavailable.”
However, the amateur radio community says AST is already using those bands. On Friday, AMSAT-Deutschland sent a letter to the FCC that says amateur radio users have detected signals from AST’s satellites over the radio bands.
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“The claim is therefore either a misrepresentation or a deliberate falsehood,” AMSAT-Deutschland wrote. In particular, AST’s BlueWalker-3 satellite was spotted using the radio band up until July 23 as the amateur radio community began campaigning against the spectrum use.
Ironically, AMSAT-Deutschland operates as a group devoted to the advancement of satellite communications, along with amateur radio satellites. In the letter, the group even noted: “We applaud AST SpaceMobile’s ambitious goals. However, innovation must not come at the expense of internationally recognized and community-supported amateur radio services.”
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AMSAT-Deutschland also tells PCMag the clash with AST has hit a nerve with the amateur radio community over concerns it could “set a precedent” if the FCC greenlights the company’s use of the 430 to 440MHz bands for satellite control. In addition, the group is worried that the FCC is “effectively shifting the resulting interference risks to other countries.”
“If similar authorizations are granted to other commercial operators, the 430-440 MHz band could gradually become unusable for amateur radio. What is framed as ‘exceptional use’ today risks becoming the norm tomorrow — to the detriment of a long-standing and diverse community of amateur radio users,” the group said.
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“It also raises questions about AST’s technical maturity,” the group added. “Other large-scale satellite operators — such as SpaceX, with over 6,000 Starlink satellites in orbit — appear to manage TT&C (Telemetry, Tracking, and Command) functions without resorting to use of the amateur UHF band.”
AST didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But the company submitted a third-party analysis to the FCC that claims to show the risk of interference to be “extremely unlikely” to amateur radio operations.
However, Mario Lorenz, the amateur radio user who helped kick off the protest campaign, told the FCC on Friday that the third-party analysis was flawed. “Yet again, AST tries to get away with handing in only half the homework it was supposed to do,” Lorenz wrote. “Despite its title, the study addresses only a single scenario of interference in the AMATEUR RADIO SATELLITE service,” not amateur radio use on the ground.
The Bulgarian Federation of Radio Amateurs also told the FCC last month: “Even slight interference under these operating conditions can result in harmful interference as defined in (FCC regulations) 47 CFR §2.1, disrupting communications, damaging experimental data integrity, and jeopardizing control of amateur satellites.”
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