The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released the adopted text of its 800 MHz drone order on Friday, October 30, a day after the 3-0 vote, and the 19-page document carries one addition the public draft did not. A new footnote names SpaceX’s pending purchase of the spectrum directly beside the drone band and says the FCC expects drones and SpaceX’s planned phone service to coexist there.

The order, FCC 26-72, ends the 1991 airborne ban for drones at 824 to 849 MHz and 869 to 894 MHz, as the draft DroneXL covered on October 9 proposed and the commission adopted on October 29. The rule takes effect 30 days after publication in the Federal Register, which had not printed it as of Sunday. SpaceX is not among the carriers, drone makers or chipmakers the draft cited for the change. The final order cites one letter from SpaceX, and the FCC added it between the draft and the vote.

Carr and Trusty Put a North Carolina Factory and a St. Paul Rescue on the Record

Chairman Brendan Carr’s statement opens at Dracoe, a veteran-owned drone maker in Aberdeen, North Carolina, that he toured with Rep. Richard Hudson on October 2. Commissioner Olivia Trusty’s opens with the St. Paul police drone that reached a child in a pond two minutes before officers in September.

Dracoe pairs low-cost drones with software to fly them as targets for counter-drone training, and it builds them near Fort Bragg, according to Hudson’s office. Dracoe told Carr it owed its start to the White House drone dominance push, and his statement puts the band at “nearly 50 megahertz of low-band spectrum.” He says the commission will vote next month on more drone spectrum, which on the published agenda means the 450 MHz and 24 GHz items set for November 19. He also ties the drone band to satellites: the Supplemental Coverage from Space proposal the commission approved at the same meeting asks whether carriers can lease their licensed spectrum to satellite operators for drone connectivity.

Trusty’s statement dates the St. Paul rescue to September 6. It happened on Monday, September 7, when a docked Skydio X10 found a 5-year-old boy with autism going under behind the East Side Boys & Girls Club, as DroneXL reported two days later. The city council pulled the department’s $200,000 drone grant that Wednesday. Trusty’s statement mentions the rescue and a visit to Skydio’s San Mateo headquarters, and leaves the council vote out. Commissioner Anna Gomez approved without a statement.

The Final Order Names SpaceX’s Bid for the Band Next Door

Footnote 29 records that the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau approved Grain Management’s purchase of T-Mobile’s 817 to 824 and 862 to 869 MHz licenses on July 1, and that SpaceX applied on October 9 to take them over. The FCC expects drones to coexist with “potential mobile and/or D2D operations” there.

D2D is direct-to-device, a satellite talking straight to a phone. Grain paid T-Mobile $2.9 billion in cash plus its own 600 MHz licenses for the spectrum, which the Justice Department had ordered T-Mobile to sell as a condition of its Sprint merger, per the bureau’s July order. The licenses cover 4.85 to 14 MHz in 3,224 counties, close to the whole US population. SpaceX announced on October 8 that it would buy all of them, up to 14 MHz of paired spectrum, for the carrier it calls Starlink Mobile. SpaceX said the band would “pave the way for Starlink Mobile to become a major mobile carrier,” CNBC reported. Neither company disclosed a price. The Wall Street Journal valued the deal at about $8 billion, according to RCR Wireless.

The footnote cites page 2 of a letter from Alison Minea, SpaceX’s satellite policy director, filed in the drone docket. The adopted order gives the letter no date, and it did not surface in a search of the docket’s public filings on Sunday, so what SpaceX asked for is not on the record DroneXL could read. The FCC’s answer is: it “intend[s] for both spectrum bands to be fully utilized.” DroneXL compared the draft and the adopted text line by line. Apart from that footnote, the changes are a new closing sentence in the opening paragraph, citation cleanup, wording in the rule appendix, and one added reference to section 22.352, which lets the FCC order a station to fix interference it causes. Zipline’s request for reduced-power drone operations is still declined.

DroneXL’s Take

The footnote is the FCC telling SpaceX, before its transfer application is even granted, that it is buying a band with drones flying next door and gets no veto over them. I like that, because the normal sequence runs the other way: the new owner shows up, files an interference study, and the smaller user ends up with a power limit. Here the drone band got its rule first, in writing, with the buyer named. A footnote binds nobody, and SpaceX’s transfer application is the place it would ask for conditions on 800 MHz drone traffic if it wants them. So watch that application, ULS file 0012212612, for any language about uncrewed aircraft. If SpaceX asks for drone limits there, this footnote is the FCC’s answer, written in advance.

Sources: FCC Report and Order FCC 26-72, released October 30, 2026, Statement of Chairman Carr, Statement of Commissioner Trusty, FCC draft Report and Order, FCC-CIRC2610-03, FCC Memorandum Opinion and Order DA 26-653, Rep. Richard Hudson press release, October 2, 2026, CNBC, RCR Wireless

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.