Modernizing and simplifying the licensing of space operations by U.S. companies will be a priority for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under the Trump administration, the new leader of the commission\u2019s Space Bureau told SATELLITE attendees at a Wednesday luncheon keynote on March 12.<\/p>\n
The FCC will also seek to free up more spectrum for the satellite industry, said Jay Schwarz, appointed by FCC Chairman Brendan Carr last month to run the office that licenses U.S. space operations and the associated spectrum.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur space licensing system is rooted in a \u2018Mother, may I?\u2019 regulatory philosophy designed for the last space race,\u201d a quarter century ago, said Schwarz. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have chosen paperwork, processes, and precautions,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s urgent we change course.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schwarz jokingly described his relationship with industry as a honeymoon period. \u201cThere\u2019s going to be plenty of time to talk about specific issues and specific proceedings, and there\u2019s going to be plenty of time for us to grow to dislike each other,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He painted a bleak picture of American space innovation stifled by unnecessary bureaucracy and cowed by unnecessarily vague rules.<\/p>\n
\u201cObtaining FCC licenses for space operations shouldn\u2019t be a multi-year odyssey,\u201d he said. \u201cEngineers shouldn\u2019t need to guess at requirements the FCC was supposed to spell out.\u201d<\/p>\n
His predecessor as Space Bureau chief agreed with that last point. \u201cRegulatory efficiency and transparency are key to ensuring our thriving space sector,\u201d Julie Kearney, now co-chair of DLA Piper\u2019s Space Exploration and Innovation Practice, told Via Satellite<\/em>.<\/p>\n Schwarz told the lunchtime audience of conference attendees that they need to know three things about him to get a \u201csense for what\u2019s going to guide the Space Bureau as we go forward:\u201d<\/p>\n He described himself as an economist, who looks at space policy \u201cthrough the lens of economic growth.\u201d The space market is predicted to grow by 9% annually, a much higher rate than the overall economy, and could help lift the rest of the nation. \u201cThe industry in this room can be a pacesetter for the overall economy. It can be a pacesetter for our nation,\u201d Schwarz said.<\/p>\n He lives on a farm in rural Northern Virginia, and said it was one of the few places in the D.C. metro area without reliable home broadband via cable when he bought it. Satellite broadband had been \u201clife-changing\u201d for his family, Schwarz said.<\/p>\n He has three children. \u201cMy kids are really why I spend so much time thinking about what I want America to look like in 10, 20, or 30 years,\u201d he said. \u201cI see the space economy as a driver of the type of innovations that will create and defend the prosperous society that I want my kids and grandkids to live in.\u201d<\/p>\n Schwarz described the effect of the FCC\u2019s current approach to its space licensing role as a \u201cregulatory drag,\u201d and said it could impede the growth potential of the space sector.<\/p>\n He did some back-of-the-envelope style calculations. Imagine if regulatory drag, not just from the FCC, but other U.S. and international agencies like the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) reduced the annual growth rate of the space economy by a \u201cteeny weeny\u201d amount like 0.3% to 8.7%. Schwarz said the net cost of that over three decades would be over 5 trillion dollars.<\/p>\n Schwarz rejoins the FCC after serving as vice president of Public Policy for Comcast for the past six years. He previously worked for the FCC in the first Trump administration, serving as former Chairman Ajit Pai\u2019s Wireline Advisor. He also held positions at the FCC in the Wireline Competition Bureau, Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, and the Office of Strategic Planning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Modernizing and simplifying the licensing of space operations by U.S. companies will be a priority for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under the Trump administration, the new leader of the commission\u2019s Space Bureau told SATELLITE attendees at a Wednesday luncheon keynote on March 12. The FCC will also seek to free up more spectrum for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49555"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}