Tampa, Fla. – Brendon Car, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, vowed to accelerate satellite regulatory reforms on 6 October, declared as “space month” as “Space Month” in the US Regulator amid growing competition from China on October.
Speaking at the ribbon-coting ceremony for Apex’s new satellite manufacturing facility at California, California, Carr underlined two main proposals, which is preparing to vote on FCC:
The first “will replace our Bespoke licensing process with a licensing assembly line, which Carr said that directly satellites and Earth station applications are in public interest and are eligible for rapid approval.
The second proposal will modify the seating rules for the earth stations in the upper microwave band, which is known as UMFUS, to enable more intensive use of the spectrum and simplify approval for operators.
“We will replace a default-to-no-no with a default-to-yas framework in the agency,” Carr said.
Since January, Carr said that the well -organized efforts have already helped the FCC process in half of the applications of the Earth Station that were pending before the regulator.
He also pointed to an ongoing rules, which can review more than 20,000 MHz spectrum for satellite broadband and spectrum-sharing rules between geostative and non-J-J-JioSystone systems.
“But even with all these tasks, which we have already done, the Space Rules of the Commission are still filled with backward looking rules,” he said.
According to Carr, the FCC structure still rests on regulatory technical beliefs, which are slow growth, databases that cannot process large-scale applications and highly conservative technical rules that restore co-existence between systems and economic models built for a small, low-competitive market and economic models.
Together, he said, these old practices “throw the space economy and they prevent space resources from going into their highest and best use. It is clear to me that more improvement is required.”
Part of the Deregurate Push of Trump Administration
The latest proposals follow the 1st August 13 executive order by President Trump to direct federal agencies, directing federal agencies to remove regulatory obstacles for the commercial space industry, including reforms to launch licensing, mission authority and environmental reviews.
Carr said that FCC’s actions have been associated with the widespread buildings of the administration, which tries to strengthen the American leadership described as the Space Race 2.0.
His speech underlined geopolitical urgency behind reforms as thousands of broadband satellites are launching in China that will rival US-based Starlinks.
“Our main competitive in this space race 2.0 is the Chinese government,” he said. “They set their eyes when dominating the orbit of low earth, and, clearly, above and down every orbit.
“So I want to be clear about the challenge and further bets: a world where the Chinese government is using its space capabilities, to control the access that billions of people around the world will have to data and the information will be less prosperous and far more dangerous.”
FCC did not provide much information about the upcoming proposals or how they could be affected by the ongoing US government shutdown.
California-based Northwood Space CEO and co-founder Bridit Melder, who is developing a global network of phased array ground stations, praised changes despite lack of nuances.
“There is a very good audit running,” the Mender, who is also a former FCC intern, said that SpacecraftSupporting efforts to update or remove old rules that no longer meet the needs of today’s space industry.
Spacenews news editor Dan Robitzsky contributed to this article by L Segundo of California.
