National Administrations vs. the ITU: Who Actually Regulates Your Satellite?

This trips up more first-time operators than almost anything else: a satellite doesn't answer to one regulator. It answers to two, doing two different jobs, and confusing them leads to real gaps in coverage.

Two layers, two different jobs

Your national administration — the FCC in the United States, Ofcom in the UK, and equivalents elsewhere — issues the actual operating license and is the sovereign authority over who's allowed to operate a satellite system under that country's law. The ITU does something different: it coordinates spectrum and orbital resources internationally, so that a satellite licensed in one country doesn't cause harmful interference to a system operated under a different country's authority. Direct licensing stays with the national administration; cross-border interference protection comes from the ITU process.

Why you need both, not either

A domestic license, on its own, doesn't guarantee interference protection from other countries' systems — that protection specifically comes from completing ITU procedures or successfully concluding coordination agreements. Regulators build this dependency directly into their own rules: FCC applicants and licensees, for instance, are required to supply the Commission with everything needed for the ITU's Advance Publication, Coordination, and Notification filings as a condition of their license. The national license authorizes you to operate; the ITU process is what makes that operation internationally defensible against interference claims.

How a filing actually moves between the two

Since only administrations can submit to the ITU, an operator works through its sponsoring administration at every stage: the administration submits the Advance Publication, then (if required) the Coordination Request, then the final Notification once coordination is complete — with the operator supplying all the technical detail behind each submission. Some administrations run internal coordination units for this specifically (in the US, NTIA's Office of Spectrum Management works alongside the FCC on ITU registration and coordination meetings); the exact internal split varies by country, but the operator's role — provide accurate technical parameters, on time — stays the same.

The practical implication

If you're only tracking your national licensing process, you're watching half the system. The ITU side runs on its own timeline (coordination comment periods, the seven-year bring-into-use clock) that doesn't automatically slow down or speed up to match your domestic licensing progress. Treating the two as a single combined process, rather than two parallel tracks that both need active management, is where operators lose time they didn't need to lose.

Sources

• "The Radio Regulations Treaty: Setting the Rules for International Satellite Connectivity," SatNews
• "International Satellite Coordination," Federal Communications Commission