ITU spectrum and orbital-slot regulation

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The international regime that allocates the two scarce resources every satellite business actually depends on: radio frequency and, for geostationary systems, orbital position. It operates through the Radio Regulations, a binding treaty instrument revised at World Radiocommunication Conferences, administered by the International Telecommunication Union in Geneva. An operator does not apply to the ITU directly; a national administration files on its behalf, and priority for non-planned bands is broadly determined by the date of filing, so an early filing carries lasting value. Two mechanisms shape constellation behaviour more than any other. The first is bringing into use: a filing lapses unless a satellite actually operates in the notified frequency at the notified position within a fixed period, which is what stops speculative filings being warehoused indefinitely. The second is the milestone regime agreed at WRC-19 for non-geostationary systems, requiring a defined percentage of the constellation to be deployed at intervals after bringing into use — an explicit response to filings for thousands of satellites that nobody intended to launch. Not a place.

A node is not a place. Drawing it on a map would assert something about the world that no stored fact supports.