WASHINGTON — The new head of the Federal Communications Commission’s space division says his focus will be licensing reform and spectrum access.
In a speech at the Satellite 2025 conference March 12, Jay Schwartz, chief of the FCC’s Space Bureau, said he will approach the regulation of satellite communications systems through an economic lens with a goal of ensuring the industry’s growth.
“The way I see it is that the main job of the Space Bureau at the FCC is to facilitate and accelerate all the investments in your industry,” he said. “If we at the FCC, whether through slow processing, overly burdensome rules, things like that, are creating unnecessary regulatory drag, that drag matters in meaningful ways.”
One topic he was would be an immediate priority for the Space Bureau is its licensing system. “Our space licensing system is rooted in a mother-may-I regulatory philosophy designed for the last space race,” he argued. “We have chosen paperwork, processes and precaution.”
That results, he claimed, in a system where getting a license can be a “multi-year odyssey” that requires reform. “The Commission will need to make sure our rules are clear so applicants know where to hit the strike zone,” he said. “We’ll look to establish envelopes of flexibility within which operators can painlessly adjust.”
That approach would involve more automation, shorter timelines and less bureaucracy. However, he did not offer a timeline for implementing that licensing reform.
The other near-term focus Schwartz identified was freeing up spectrum for “intensive space uses,” which he said would follow a similar approach as what the FCC has done for spectrum for mobile services.
“Yes, we’ll look for new bands, but we’ll also see if existing bands are being used as intensively as possible, and we will also look to clear out restrictive technical rules holding back deployment,” he said. “It’s imperative that we ask how spectrum for satellite can be more available and also more intensively used.”
The FCC announced Feb. 27 a new public consultation to examine potential new uses of upper C-band satellite spectrum. That could result in an auction of that spectrum to terrestrial wireless operators, similar to what took place with lower C-band spectrum in 2020, or a mix of space and terrestrial uses of the spectrum.
Schwartz, named chief of the Space Bureau Feb. 4, does not have a space industry background. He was previously vice president of public policy at Comcast and before that held several other positions at the FCC, including as an adviser to then-chairman Ajit Pai.
However, he has experience with the satellite industry’s services. He described in his speech that he and his family live on a farm outside Washington that lacked “high-speed, reliable home broadband,” much to the dismay of his children.
“That all did change when we got high-speed satellite broadband,” he said. “So it’s not an exaggeration to say that I understand from a very personal level how what this industry does and the advances in this industry can be life changing in a very, very real way.”
