Spain, U.K. and U.S. regulators map different roads to WRC-27
In sum – what we know:
- Provision 4.4 – Today’s direct-to-device systems are notified as operations not in conformity with the treaty, so they are unprotected and can be ordered shut down.
- Three national approaches – Ofcom enabled D2D early, the FCC opened terrestrial bands by order in 2024, and Spain is awaiting WRC-27 before licensing operators with incumbent protection.
- No faster conferences – Regulators rejected shortening the four-year WRC cycle and discounted AI speeding the studies, leaving bilateral coordination and commercial deals to bridge the gap.
Direct-to-device connectivity has run ahead of the international rulebook. Reusing spectrum allocated solely for terrestrial use and retransmitting it from space creates an interference environment the ITU framework never contemplated, and the services operating today do so under a provision of the radio regulations meant for experiments, not commercial networks. At the same time, regulators are being asked to authorize supplemental coverage from space, open mobile satellite bands, consider unlicensed spectrum for satellite links and coordinate across borders — all while protecting incumbents and preserving competition.
The spectrum panel at the NTN Integration Forum 2026, hosted by RCR Wireless News, brought together regulators from Spain, the U.K. and the U.S. alongside a veteran of U.S. delegations to every World Radiocommunication Conference since the 1990s. Their discussion mapped three national approaches that differ in pace and instrument, a shared stake in the permanent, globally harmonized framework due at WRC-27 and, in the FCC’s view, a market that will be shaped more by commercial deal-making than by new rules.
Spectrum optimization in the NTN era
Moderator Tom Stroup, president of the Satellite Industry Association, set the terms plainly. The opportunity to use terrestrial spectrum as well as spectrum licensed to the satellite industry “creates challenges for regulators dealing with coexistence, cross-border coordination, and licensing models.” He asked each regulator what their country is doing about it.
Julia Criado, deputy director general for spectrum planning and management in Spain and chair of the EU’s Radio Spectrum Policy Group, located the challenge in the new type of use: direct-to-device can be provided not only in the traditional mobile satellite service bands but also in terrestrial mobile bands. Spain has run trials — MasOrange with Starlink — in the 2.6 GHz band, kept controlled and tightly localized “because the band is a problematic one,” with critical adjacent services. Within Europe, work is under way on technical harmonization to use IMT bands for NTN, and the RSPG has issued an opinion on direct-to-device as a complement to terrestrial networks, including the modification of national concessions so terrestrial licensees can operate NTN. Spain is also waiting on WRC-27, which she expects to settle many open questions and deliver “a more permanent framework that could allow us to introduce the services with more guarantees” of protection for incumbent systems.
Liz Quintana, head of space authorization policy at Ofcom, described a regulator that has moved early. The U.K. was among the first to enable fixed satellite service from non-geostationary systems, and “more recently we have enabled direct-to-device satellite services to help complement mobile in the U.K.” using IMT spectrum. Existing MSS frameworks have supported Apple’s emergency messaging since 2022, and Ofcom is looking at the 2 GHz MSS band alongside its European counterparts. Her summary of the sector’s appetite: “Name a band, and there’s a satellite operator who’s interested in doing something interesting in it.”
Arpan Sura, senior counsel to FCC Chairman Carr, who directs the agency’s domestic and international spectrum policy portfolio and serves as its chief AI officer, described the U.S. approach as a bet that has paid off. The FCC’s 2024 orderallowing terrestrial spectrum to be used by satellite direct-to-device providers was “one of the first decisions of its kind, and it’s been a tremendous success”; over the last 20 months, “we’ve seen a wave of investment in innovation that was unforeseeable in many ways,” including deal flow on the Big LEO, L-band and 2 GHz MSS bands. The FCC has responded on several fronts: an order clarifying that MSS rights in key bands are exclusively held by those providers; approval of AST SpaceMobile‘s 248-satellite constellation over low-band spectrum held by Verizon and AT&T; and a first-of-its-kind notice of proposed rulemaking on using unlicensed frequencies at 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz — more than 200 megahertz — for satellite links, intended to get ahead of the issue before it becomes a commercial choke point. To an audience question about the risk to Wi-Fi, he pointed to the rulemaking’s own premise: the bands “have been huge success stories” and the agency’s fundamental “first principle is to do no harm.” Sura conceded the 2024 rules had opened some bands but not all, “an inherently cautious approach at the time, just given the novelty of the issue,” and the agency is now looking at new bands and exclusive-use MSS alike. “We’re not prioritizing one or the other,” he said; the FCC is pursuing an all-of-the-above approach and “trying to find spectrum at every available opportunity.”
Audrey Allison, senior policy analyst at the Center for Space Policy and Strategy at The Aerospace Corporation and a former FCC international bureau regulator, explained why WRC-27 matters so much. The radio regulations are a treaty designed to protect countries’ radio operations from harmful interference, and reusing spectrum “that’s solely allocated for use on the ground to all of a sudden start retransmitting it from space” creates “a whole different interference environment that has not been studied.” The D2D and supplemental coverage from space operations authorized so far are “in derogation of these regulations.” But innovation in technology and services outpaces the rules, “because regulations come second.”
Regulators from some 163 countries backed a WRC-27 agenda item — 1.13 — that Allison called huge, at a conference where about 80% of agenda items are space-related: “this is the first conference this century where the real emphasis is on space services.” The approach mirrors the FCC’s: allocate mobile satellite service for direct connectivity to IMT user terminals in bands between 694 MHz and 2.7 GHz identified for IMT, about 13 frequency arrangements in all, with sharing studies that have to protect every incumbent in those bands across FDD and TDD arrangements and the different ways terrestrial networks are deployed. “It’s proven to be very difficult,” she said. The studies are due October 23 of this year, the report goes to administrations in spring 2027, and the conference opens October 18, 2027 in Shanghai. Agenda item 7 will also take up provision 4.4, under which today’s D2D systems have been notified as operations not in conformity with the treaty: “They’re not protected from harmful interference,” and if they cause interference, the notifying administration must shut the service down immediately. The provision is normally used for emergencies or new technologies, “but not for commercial services.” Allison’s preference was clear: “If we do our good work under 1.13 and we provide a good regulatory solution for these services, well, I’ll be happy, and everyone will have certainty and protections, and we won’t need to rely on this 4.4 provision anymore.”
The question of whether the international framework should change surfaced a transatlantic tension. Sura said Chairman Carr has talked about rethinking the U.S. approach to reciprocity. The U.S. has long had a policy of non-discrimination, reciprocity and openness, and, as Sura put it, “going forward, we intend to maintain our posture of reciprocity.” The FCC sought comment on the issue earlier this year, prompted in part by an EU proposal to redistribute the 2 GHz band so that “two-thirds of it goes towards national and governmental champions” rather than American companies or companies from other parts of the world — “not a positive development,” in Sura’s view. Criado agreed reciprocity “allows really to scale systems,” but drew a line between the international coordination framework and national rights over spectrum as a public resource. “Each country and each territory has the right to authorize specific provision of services, and in this sense, Europe is doing that.”
On cadence, the panel counseled against trying to speed the ITU up. Quintana warned that more frequent meetings would dilute the discipline of “that one conference every four years, because it’s kind of a one-shot deal,” and Allison had the history: the ITU tried two-year conferences in the late 1990s, “and it was an utter, utter disaster,” because building consensus nationally, regionally and globally “just isn’t possible” in two years. “It really does take a solid four years to do the hard work.” The release valves are bilateral and regional coordination between conferences, and 4.4 itself. Asked whether AI could accelerate spectrum optimization or the studies themselves, the regulators were open but firm about the limits. Criado said AI will simplify many procedures, but “the fundamentals will still be there, and the regulation is still needed to clarify responsibilities and verify compliance.” Sura made the same point in legal terms: the rights and responsibilities that grew out of interference management are “sort of instruments of law,” and no sharing technology replaces the need to decide who has access to a resource at a given time.
Looking five years out, Sura expected the decisive action on the commercial side. “This is an emerging industry. There are lots of interesting deals and plays that have to be run, and we just have to let the market work.” The FCC does not intend “to superintend this sort of thriving business ecosystem”; “ultimately the answer will be in commercial deal-making.” Quintana’s hope was for no fragmentation of international regulations and agreement on 1.13, which “really will make a massive difference to the deployment of these services,” with competition a live concern “because we want good choices for the consumers.” The picture that emerged was of a sector being enabled aggressively at the national level while its permanent international footing is still more than a year away — a gap the industry has to engineer through rather than wait out.
