FCC IBFS Satellite Filings Scraper

Extract structured data from FCC International Bureau Filing System (IBFS) satellite service filings at fcc.report. No account required.

What it does

The actor crawls FCC IBFS filing category pages and fetches individual filing detail pages, returning structured records for each filing. It covers:

• SAT filings — Space station applications: launch-and-operate (LOA), modifications (MOD), special temporary authority (STA), amended filings (AMD), and transfer of control
• SES filings — Earth station applications: licenses (LIC), modifications (MOD), renewals (RWL), registrations (REG), and special temporary authority (STA)

Each record includes the applicant name, filing/action dates, status, satellite service type, frequency bands, attached document URLs, and public notice dates.

Use cases

• Competitive intelligence — Track competitor satellite operator filings: Starlink, Kuiper, OneWeb, Viasat, SES, Intelsat, and hundreds more
• Spectrum law — Monitor NGSO market access requests, frequency coordination filings, and FCC action on pending applications
• M&A diligence — Enumerate a company's FCC spectrum licenses and pending modifications
• RF coordination — Build earth-station databases for interference analysis and frequency coordination
• Regulatory monitoring — Set up incremental runs with date filters to receive alerts on new and modified IBFS filings

Input

Field	Type	Description
maxItems	integer	Maximum number of filings to scrape (default: 50)
filingTypes	string[]	Filing type prefixes, e.g. ["SAT-LOA", "SES-MOD"]. Leave empty for all types
startDate	string	Filter by action date on or after (YYYY-MM-DD). Leave empty for all dates
endDate	string	Filter by action date on or before (YYYY-MM-DD). Leave empty for all dates

Supported filing types

Prefix	Category	Description
SAT-LOA	Space Station	Application to Launch and Operate
SAT-MOD	Space Station	Modification
SAT-STA	Space Station	Special Temporal Authority
SAT-AMD	Space Station	Amended Filing
SAT-T-C	Space Station	Transfer of Control
SES-LIC	Earth Station	License
SES-MOD	Earth Station	Modification
SES-RWL	Earth Station	Renewal
SES-STA	Earth Station	Special Temporal Authority
SES-REG	Earth Station	Earth Station Registration

Output

Each item in the dataset represents one IBFS filing:

{
  "file_number": "SAT-MOD-20230412-00081",
  "filing_type": "SAT",
  "application_type": "MOD",
  "applicant_name": "Astranis Projects USA LLC",
  "bureau": "International Bureau",
  "filing_date": "2023-04-12",
  "action_date": "2023-05-19",
  "status": "Accepted for Filing Public Notice",
  "filing_description": "Modification to adjust the TT&C frequencies for the Arcturus satellite.",
  "service_type": "Fixed Satellite Service",
  "frequency_bands": "[{\"lower\":\"18200\",\"upper\":\"20200\"},{\"lower\":\"28000\",\"upper\":\"30000\"}]",
  "attached_documents": "[{\"url\":\"https://fcc.report/IBFS/.../21518303\",\"name\":\"Attachment Narrative\"}]",
  "call_sign": "S3092",
  "public_notice_date": null,
  "filing_url": "https://fcc.report/IBFS/SAT-MOD-20230412-00081",
  "fcc_url": "https://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/..."
}

Field reference

Field	Description
file_number	FCC IBFS filing identifier (e.g. SES-MOD-20201204-01305)
filing_type	Top-level filing type: SAT (space station) or SES (earth station)
application_type	Sub-type: LOA, MOD, RWL, STA, LIC, REG, AMD, T-C
applicant_name	Company or individual name
bureau	FCC bureau (always "International Bureau" for IBFS)
filing_date	Date the application was submitted
action_date	Date of the most recent FCC action
status	Current status: Granted, Pending, Filed, Action Taken, etc.
filing_description	Narrative description of the filing purpose
service_type	Satellite service: Fixed Satellite Service, Mobile Satellite Service, NGSO, etc.
frequency_bands	JSON string array of {lower, upper} frequency pairs in MHz
attached_documents	JSON string array of {url, name} for attached PDF documents
call_sign	FCC call sign assigned to earth station filings
public_notice_date	Most recent public notice date
filing_url	Canonical fcc.report detail page URL
fcc_url	FCC licensing.fcc.gov URL for the filing
source_page_html	Raw HTML of the filing metadata block for downstream parsing

Rate limits and politeness

The actor makes requests at approximately 1 request per second. For large runs, use startDate/endDate filters to run incrementally rather than requesting full history in one pass.

Data source

All data is sourced from fcc.report, a free public mirror of the FCC International Bureau Filing System. The original data is published by the FCC under public domain terms.