MDA's "SpaceRAN" Direct-to-Device constellation plan surfaced in full detail for the first time
As the brief logged it
SpaceQ (Marc Boucher) reports MDA is pursuing a 170-satellite LEO D2D constellation ("SpaceRAN," Phase 1 at 96 sats, 750km orbits, AWS-4 S-band 2000-2020/2180-2200MHz), funded through partnerships rather than MDA's own balance sheet ("not in our pipeline" per MDA's Aug 7 earnings call) and led via an advance-publication request Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) filed with the ITU on MDA's behalf on 2026-07-13. No partners are named yet. This is the first concrete satellite-count/spectrum/orbit detail on an entity this desk has carried only as a vague CEO mention since 08-09 and a Telesat-CEO corroboration on 08-14 — a genuine 8th-or-later funded D2D architecture reinforcing the "D2D supply is abundant" argument central to SpaceConnect's opposition on the 2 GHz MSS thread — but the underlying filing itself is stale (>7d), so this is context, not a fresh event. [POSITIONING — Direct-to-device (D2D) competitive field; 2 GHz MSS spectrum allocation [read-across only]]
Provenance
Logged in the brief of 29 August 2026.
Raw brief ↗ (repository access)