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On April 21, 2026, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted AST SpaceMobile limited authorization when not over the United States to use five 50-kHz channels in the 430\u2013440 MHz secondary amateur band for emergency Telemetry, Tracking, and Control (TT&C) operations for its planned satellite constellation (DA-26-391 Docket No. 25-201). The authorization applies only for communication with five specified earth stations, each located well outside of the United States and for which the foreign administration with jurisdiction also must separately authorize the communications.<\/p>\n
More than 2,500 comments were filed during the proceeding including filings from ARRL The National Association for Amateur Radio\u00ae<\/span>\u00a0and other member societies of the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU), AMSAT, and individual radio amateurs worldwide.\u00a0<\/p>\n After considering the filed comments, the FCC narrowed the requested authorization to emergency TT&C only and further provided that:<\/p>\n Use of these frequencies is permitted only in emergencies when no other spectrum is available<\/p>\n Each emergency event is limited to no more than 24 hours<\/p>\n Transmissions are restricted to five specific center frequencies (430.5, 432.3, 434.1, 435.9, and 439.5 MHz), each with no more than 50 kHz bandwidth<\/p>\n In an April 29, 2026 statement, the IARU expressed concern with the FCC\u2019s use of Article 4.4 of the ITU Radio Regulations, which allows administrations to authorize non-standard frequency use under certain conditions. The IARU stated that other frequency bands allocated for satellite TT&C should have been used instead of amateur spectrum and encouraged amateurs to report any interference to their national regulators.\u00a0<\/p>\n ARRL filed comments (see ARRL News) in July (PDF) and August 2025 (PDF) opposing the application, arguing that:<\/p>\n The request represented an unprecedented use of secondary amateur spectrum for an unallocated use by a large commercial satellite constellation<\/p>\n Such operations could cause harmful interference, particularly to amateur satellites in the 435\u2013438 MHz subband<\/p>\n The FCC should avoid authorizing non-allocated uses that could impact primary allocations for amateur services in other countries.\u00a0<\/p>\n While the FCC ultimately granted the authorization, it imposed the above significant limitations in response to these concerns that reduce the likelihood of interference.<\/p>\n In the US, reports of suspected interference to amateur spectrum can be shared with the ARRL Regulatory Information Manager, email reginfo@arrl.org.<\/p>\n ARRL will oppose any similar unallocated uses of spectrum used by amateurs that might cause harmful interference to amateur services and in particular will monitor this situation.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n