By Rebecca Stone

SpaceX has asked the Federal Communications Commission to reconsider its approval of Viasat's latest geostationary satellite, ViaSat-3 F2, and to deny the operator US market access over what it calls "wanton" violations of licence conditions.

The satellite is scheduled to enter service next month. That timing gives the petition practical weight: if the FCC opens a reconsideration proceeding, Viasat could face a commercial wait while its three-satellite GEO constellation in the Ka-band waits on a regulatory outcome.

Viasat has dismissed the filing. "The FCC has already authorised ViaSat-3 F2 to serve the US market and SpaceX's petition does nothing to change that," a company spokesman said. "We have already addressed SpaceX's baseless claims and have filed a response to their petition with the FCC." That response is not yet publicly available.

Notably, Viasat's GEO satellites are not in direct competition with any of SpaceX's projects. The dispute is about spectrum, not subscribers.

What does SpaceX allege?

The petition, filed with the FCC, makes four main claims:

• Viasat has "failed to technically demonstrate that ViaSat-3 F2 can operate and protect NGSO operations from harmful interference".
• Viasat omitted any analysis of interference to non-geostationary uplink transmissions in the 28.6–29.1 GHz band — an omission that "alone warrants reconsideration and denial of its market access request", according to SpaceX.
• Viasat's own analysis "shows it will harm Americans by interfering with NGSO downlink services in the 18.8–19.3 GHz band", with downlink interference affecting users one third of the time in that band.
• There is "no coordination agreement in place"; SpaceX says Viasat has "failed and even refused" to coordinate "for years".

SpaceX also argues Viasat has withheld operational data on Earth station transmissions and avoidance angles that would let other operators or the FCC "pick up its slack", and that Viasat's proposed mitigation would impose avoidance angles that limit NGSO service.

"Viasat's proposal would turn the Commission's NGSO Ka-band rules on their head, effectively giving GSOs priority and harming Americans by forcing NGSOs to operate on a secondary basis to GSOs," the petition states. It adds, bluntly: "Rules mean nothing to Viasat unless they can use them to harm competition."

Those are strong words. They are also advocacy. The petition is a filing by a competitor, not an FCC finding, and the commission has not responded to it.

Why the regulatory context matters

The FCC recently scrapped the EPFD (equivalent power flux-density) framework that has limited interference between satellite systems in the Ka (26.5–40 GHz) and Ku (12–18 GHz) bands since the 1990s. Regulators concluded the old rules capped the number of LEO satellites and therefore hindered rural US coverage. In its place, the FCC wants interference managed through "good-faith coordination" and, in its own words, "private negotiations where the current EPFD regime has prevented beneficial bargaining".

SpaceX's petition is one of the first major stress tests of that replacement. The company claims coordination has broken down entirely — and that assertion, rather than the technical exhibits, may shape how the FCC rules.

A pattern of escalating complaints

The filing fits a broader pattern. Amazon and SpaceX recently traded demands that each other's constellations be denied, citing harmful interference and alleged failures to meet FCC licence conditions, while Amazon Leo and AST SpaceMobile compete with SpaceX in satellite broadband and direct-to-device connectivity.

SpaceX is itself facing interference accusations. Iridium, which recently agreed a deal with launch company Rocket Lab, told the FCC that SpaceX's upgraded US gateway stations would create interference in the shared 19.4–19.6 GHz and 29.1–29.3 GHz bands. SpaceX replied with a letter accusing Iridium of a "well-documented history of anticompetitive attacks against its competitors and American consumers".

The FCC has yet to respond to the petition, and Viasat's rebuttal is still unpublished — meaning the strongest challenge SpaceX has mounted against the company currently rests on one side's filings alone. A decision, or an extension into a full proceeding, would set the first real precedent for the post-EPFD coordination regime.