A New Framework for a Booming Industry
The satellite industry is growing faster than the regulatory apparatus designed to govern it. Thousands of new spacecraft are entering orbit every year, mega-constellations are reshaping the communications landscape, and operators are iterating on their hardware at a pace that legacy licensing frameworks were never built to accommodate. Jay Schwarz, head of the Federal Communications Commission's Space Bureau, is trying to change that. Speaking at the SmallSat Symposium in Mountain View, California, on February 11, Schwarz laid out an ambitious reform agenda that would fundamentally reshape how the United States regulates commercial space activities.
The initiative falls under the FCC's broader Build America Agenda and targets three areas that industry stakeholders have long identified as bottlenecks: spectrum access, licensing speed, and operational flexibility.
Opening 20,000 Megahertz of New Spectrum
The centerpiece of Schwarz's proposal is a massive spectrum expansion. Under what the bureau calls the "Spectrum Abundance" initiative, the FCC would open approximately 20,000 megahertz of additional radio frequency capacity across multiple bands, including the 12, 42, and 51 gigahertz frequencies as well as allocations in the W-band. The agency is also exploring shared-use arrangements between satellite operators and terrestrial wireless systems in the Upper Microwave Flexible Use Service bands above 24 gigahertz.
Spectrum is the lifeblood of satellite communications. Every broadband constellation, every Earth observation downlink, every direct-to-device service competes for finite radio frequency resources. As the number of active satellites has exploded -- SpaceX alone operates more than 6,000 Starlink spacecraft -- the demand for clean, interference-free spectrum has intensified. Opening 20,000 megahertz would represent a substantial injection of capacity, potentially easing congestion and enabling new services that current allocations cannot support.
Schwarz also signaled that the FCC is preparing aggressively for the 2027 World Radio Conference (WRC) in China, where global spectrum allocations will be negotiated. "We are prepared, so that our operators can win," he said, underscoring the competitive dimension of spectrum policy at a time when China and Europe are advancing their own satellite broadband programs.
