[Starlink] The curious case of the missing Starlink spectrum licences

[Ulrich Speidel <u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz>]

The other day I had reason to look up the Starlink spectrum licences in 
NZ. These are issued by Radio Spectrum Management in NZ and used to be 
in the Register of Radio Frequencies, which is publicly searchable:

https://www.rsm.govt.nz/licensing/how-do-i/use-the-rrf/search-the-rrf/

Alas, this time, I've drawn an almost complete blank. None of the six 
known ground stations still have their licenses on the register. There 
are a few lone search suggestions for a licence "57321 PUWERA STARLINK 
SES", "56530 TE HANA STARLINK SES", "57189 CLEVEDON STARLINK SES", 
"57282 HINDS STARLINK SES", "56839 CROMWELL STARLINK SES", and "56383 
AWARUA STARLINK SES" but these searches come up empty or with irrelevant 
results. Similarly, searching for any kind of satellite licence fails to 
find them. Similarly looking for "starlink", "space", or "spacex".

Yet a traceroute from our Dishy shows that we're still landing in NZ. So 
that presumably means that the teleports are still operating here and 
that Starlink isn't backhauling via laser to elsewhere.

Security? The locations of the teleports are well known, they're 
plastered all over the Internet and are visible on Google Maps/Earth. So 
they're probably not hiding the licences to disguise location.

Website dysfunction? Possible. NZ government department websites don't 
always work all that well. But I can also find plenty of other licences 
on the site, so it's not all that dysfunctional.

Licence holder change? Then they should pop up under satellite spectrum 
licenses, but all the contenders there are the usual suspects (Inmarsat, 
Optus, Iridium, ...). No Starlink in Ku or Ka band.

That makes me wonder: Is Elon not paying his fees?

Anyone seeing anything similar where they are?

-- 
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Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)

The University of Auckland
u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
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