FCC Part 100: What the 7 October Guidance Means for Satellite Milestones and Surety Bonds

If you hold an FCC satellite licence, two of the most expensive conditions attached to it are the deployment milestones and the surety bond. Miss a milestone and you can lose authority for the satellites you have not launched; miss it while holding a bond and the bond is payable to the US Treasury. The FCC rewrote both rules in July as part of its new Part 100. On 7 October 2026 the Space Bureau published the instructions for getting from the old rules to the new ones.

What happened on 7 October

The Space Bureau released a public notice, DA 26-1080, titled “Guidance on Transition of Part 25 Milestone and Surety Bond Rules and Requirements to Part 100”, in SB Docket 25-306. In four pages it says who can swap their current milestone and bond terms for the Part 100 versions, what a request must contain, and how the Bureau will approve requests, including some relief available before Part 100 takes effect.

The new rules are not yet in force: “Prior to the Effective Date, all current part 25 rules will control, except as specified herein or otherwise announced.” The Bureau will announce the Part 100 Effective Date separately.

Where Part 100 comes from

On 22 July 2026 the Commission adopted its Space Modernization for the 21st Century Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, FCC 26-47, released the next day. It replaces Part 25 of the FCC’s rules, which has governed satellite and earth station licensing for decades, with a new Part 100 built around what the Commission calls a “licensing assembly line”. The proposal had been published in the Federal Register as a notice of proposed rulemaking on 5 December 2025.

The order covers far more than milestones and bonds. It sets a default 20-year term for space and earth station licences, replacing the current mix of 15 years for most satellites and six years for small satellites, and it creates a variable trajectory space station (VTSS) category that I discussed in the context of in-orbit servicing and mission authorization. The Commission has already started amending Part 100 rather than Part 25, as it did in the Satellite Spectrum Abundance order adopted on 30 September.

The milestone changes

Under the current rule, 47 CFR 25.164, a GSO licensee must launch and operate its satellite within five years of the licence grant. An NGSO licensee must have 50% of its authorised satellites launched and operating within six years and the full constellation within nine.

Part 100 keeps the GSO rule. The Commission had proposed scrapping it, but commenters “strongly oppose[d]” that, arguing the milestone stops orbital slots being tied up, so the five-year benchmark survives in section 100.146(a).

For NGSO systems the rules now split in two:

NGSO systems licensed outside a processing round move to a longer schedule in section 100.146(b). The licensee must launch and operate at least one satellite for a continuous 90 days within seven years of grant. If it meets that, it must have 10% of the authorised satellites operating by year nine, 50% by year 12 and 100% by year 14. The order says the seven-year first step is “consistent with the ITU’s bringing into use (BIU) period”, and it adopts the 10%, 50% and 100% structure to match the ITU’s own deployment benchmarks, after operators including Kepler and Amazon Leo argued for alignment. I explained how those international benchmarks work in our piece on ITU spectrum and orbital slots.

NGSO systems licensed in a processing round, which is now voluntary under section 100.140, keep the existing six-year and nine-year benchmarks. VTSS authorisations are excluded from these NGSO milestones.

If no authorised satellite is functional in orbit at the seven-year mark, the authorisation terminates automatically.

The surety bond changes

The bond change is bigger in money terms. Under current 47 CFR 25.165, almost every space station licensee must post a bond within 30 days of grant. The amount rises over time: for NGSO licensees from $1 million towards $5 million over six years, and for GSO licensees from $1 million towards $3 million over five. The licensee defaults if it surrenders the licence before meeting a milestone or simply misses one.

Part 100 cuts the bond back sharply. Section 100.147 eliminates it for all GSO systems and for NGSO systems authorised outside a processing round. As the Bureau’s notice puts it, “only NGSO and multi-orbit satellite systems authorized pursuant to the processing round procedures are subject to the surety bond requirements.” Because joining a processing round is optional, the order describes the bond as effectively optional too: an applicant can weigh the protection a processing round gives against the cost of posting the bond.

For those who do post one, the formula now runs the other way. It starts at a flat $10 million whatever the size of the system and falls as satellites are deployed:

B = $10,000,000 minus $10,000,000 x (D / (0.9A))

where D is the number of NGSO satellites deployed and A is the number authorised, excluding replacements, rounded to the nearest $10,000. On a processing-round licence for 1,000 satellites, the bond would be $10 million at grant, $5 million once 450 satellites are up, and zero at 900. The licensee can reduce the bond by notifying the FCC of its updated deployment count.

The proposal had floated $20 million as the starting figure and a bond for every NGSO system of 200 or more satellites; the Commission adopted neither.

How an operator switches

To use the new milestone or bond terms on an existing licence or market access grant, an operator must meet three conditions set by the notice. It must be in compliance with all current milestone and bond terms. It must not have a pending request for a milestone waiver. And it must not have received a milestone waiver under section 25.164 at any point.

The request is a letter filed in the ICFS file for the relevant system, and it must include:

1. the licensee or operator’s name;
2. the file numbers and call signs of the licences;
3. a certified statement that it complies with its milestone and bond terms;
4. a certified statement that it has no pending or previously granted milestone waiver; and
5. either an updated milestone schedule calculated from the original authorisation date, or, for a processing-round bond, a revised bond amount under the new formula.

An operator with several systems can put them in one consolidated letter, but the letter must still be filed in each system’s ICFS file.

The window is one year from the Part 100 Effective Date. The consequence of missing it is spelled out: “the milestone and surety bond requirements as initially authorized will remain in force for the remainder of the system’s license term.”

The Bureau will review letters and list approved requests “on a rolling basis via informative public notice”. Once a request is listed, the operator is immediately relieved of its Part 25 bond obligations, and can cancel the bond or, if it is staying in a processing round, file a reduced bond within 30 days. A timely letter also pauses any obligation to top up an existing bond while the request is pending. If the Bureau denies a request, the operator has 30 days to post whatever bond is still required.

Relief before Part 100 takes effect

There is one opening now. The notice says current licensees and market access grantees “may wish to take advantage of the new surety bond rules prior to the Effective Date” and lets them file the same letter now to be relieved of the Part 25 bond. That matters most to GSO operators and NGSO operators outside a processing round, whose bond obligations disappear entirely under Part 100.

Operators authorised in a processing round have to wait. They cannot file a reduced bond under the new formula until Part 100 is effective and their transition request has been approved.

For pending applications, the Bureau will apply the Part 100 milestone and bond rules to systems authorised after the Effective Date, and applicants can include the certifications in a supplement to support a bond waiver before then.

A detail worth noticing

The July order suggested that most operators would not need to do anything. Paragraph 327 said the bond relief would apply “without the need for any action to be taken by the licensee or the Space Bureau.” The October notice narrows that: “We clarify that authorized operators who would be relieved of the surety bond obligations under section 100.147(a) must still file a letter request for each authorized system.”

So every operator that wants out of its bond must file. Given the one-year cut-off, I would treat the letter as mandatory housekeeping.

What it means in practice

For small and mid-sized NGSO operators outside a processing round, this is the most useful part of Part 100: no bond growing towards $5 million, and 14 years rather than nine to complete the constellation. GSO operators keep their five-year deadline but lose a bond of up to $3 million. Large processing-round constellations keep their six and nine-year deadlines and a bond, but one that falls as they deploy.

The wider point is that milestones and bonds have always been tools against spectrum warehousing. Part 100 leans more on ITU deployment rules and automatic termination, and less on cash at risk. Whether that disciplines paper filings will only be clear in a few years. The same licensing overhaul also shapes newer services such as direct-to-device satellite service.

What I would watch

The first is the Effective Date notice. Every deadline in DA 26-1080 runs from it, and until it is published Part 25 still applies. When I checked the Federal Register on 23 October 2026, I could find the December 2025 proposal but not the July order itself, so the timing is still open.

The second is the first list of approved transition requests. It will show how strictly the Bureau reads the bar on anyone who has ever received a milestone waiver.

The third is processing rounds. Paragraph 328 of the order says the Bureau will issue separate instructions for the transition to the new processing round rules. Operators with licences conditioned on a future processing round should watch that closely, because it decides which milestone and bond regime they end up in.

The fourth is how the rest of Part 100 lands, including the orbital debris and reporting rules, which interact with commitments such as the five-year deorbit rule.

This article reflects FCC 26-47 and public notice DA 26-1080 as published on the FCC’s website as at 23 October 2026. It is general information, not legal advice on any particular licence.

Anuj KumarEditor-in-Chief

Anuj Kumar is the founder of Legal Desire Media and publishes Fashion Law Journal and Space Law Journal.

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