FCC waives Amazon’s satellite internet deadline as rocket shortage stalls launches

Amazon $AMZN -2.53%’s Kuiper Systems LLC received a conditional waiver from the Federal Communications Commission on Friday, relieving the company of a requirement to have half its planned satellite broadband constellation in orbit by July 30.

Deploying 1,616 of its planned 3,232 Gen 1 satellites by that date was a condition the FCC attached to Amazon’s 2020 license, when the network operated under the Project Kuiper name. In January, the company petitioned the FCC to push the deadline back by two years, pointing to a constrained market for commercial launches. The FCC declined to extend the interim deadline but granted a limited waiver instead, leaving Amazon’s final deployment obligation — all 3,232 satellites by July 30, 2029 — intact.

According to GeekWire, 331 Amazon Leo satellites are currently operating in orbit, and 36 more are set to lift off the following week. The company had told the FCC it expected to have roughly 700 satellites deployed by the July milestone date — about 21% of its authorized constellation.

As a condition of the waiver, any Amazon Leo satellites launched after July 30 will lose their original spectrum priority status from the 2020 and 2021 FCC processing rounds. Under that condition, responsibility for preventing signal conflicts with other satellite networks shifts to Amazon for those later-launched spacecraft. Priority status becomes recoverable once Amazon crosses the 50% deployment threshold, or automatically in March 2028 if that milestone has not been reached sooner. A separate provision in the order moves that restoration date up to October 2027 if Amazon can demonstrate it has finished building the required satellites and locked in enough launch contracts to deliver 50% of the constellation.

Amazon will also be required to forfeit its surety bond if it fails to meet the 50% milestone by July 30, even though its authority to continue deploying satellites beyond that date remains intact.

The FCC said the waiver is intended to promote broadband competition, noting that SpaceX is currently the only operator providing satellite broadband to American consumers from low Earth orbit. Amazon has invested more than $10 billion in the constellation, the company said in its waiver application.

Rival operator SpaceX, whose Starlink network competes directly with Amazon Leo, pushed back against any relief for Amazon, telling the FCC the undeployed satellites should be held over for a later licensing cycle. The FCC rejected that approach.

Compounding the launch capacity problem, a New Glenn vehicle owned by Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin company was destroyed at its Florida pad last month during a static-fire test, an incident Bloomberg reported could set back that rocket line by months. Amazon had been counting on New Glenn to carry satellites to orbit. The company says it plans to begin commercial service this year.Qz