Telesat's Deadline Extension Ask Catches Flak

Amazon and SpaceX are raising red flags over Telesat's request for more time to meet milestone deadlines for its Lightspeed low earth orbit constellation (see 2310270002). An extended or waived milestone deadline would undermine the FCC's processing round framework "and frustrate the purpose of its buildout milestones," Amazon said Monday. It said the alternative of moving Telesat's first-round surety bond to its second-round system would help promote competition and innovation from a new non-geostationary orbit operator and further the purpose of the commission's surety bond requirements. The FCC "must guard against COVID-related arguments becoming a get-out-of-jail-free card for any operator that fails to make the required level of progress on deploying and operating its authorized system," SpaceX said. It said the agency should "scrutinize very carefully, and bring a healthy skepticism to, an operator’s milestone extension requests where they are not supported by contemporaneous public statements warning of a COVID-related delay," especially when other operators met their deployment obligations at the same time.