New FCC Satellite Rules Could Improve Starlink Capacity to a Surprising Degree

Federal regulators just approved a major upgrade to satellite internet services, ditching a decades-old rule that restricted how low-Earth orbit satellites could transmit signals to avoid interfering with other satellites. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted on Thursday to modernize its satellite spectrum-sharing rules, which could increase capacity for space-based broadband services by up to sevenfold. “This is a major step toward enhancing the satellite broadband experience for millions of Americans by enabling faster speeds, lower costs, and greater reliability,” the FCC wrote in a statement. The recent announcement comes as a revamp of the Equivalent Power Flux Density (EPFD) framework, developed in the late 1990s. The original framework was designed to prevent radio signal interference caused by satellites in low-Earth orbit, or non-geostationary orbit (NGSO), from affecting higher-orbiting geostationary satellites (GSO). As a result, it limited the amount of energy transmitted by satellites in low-Earth orbit to ground-based equipment, thereby slowing broadband speeds for consumers. SpaceX currently operates the largest satellite internet constellation in low-Ea