FCC plans ‘Space Assembly Line’
October 8, 2025
By Chris Forrester
FCC chairman Brendan Carr is not everyone’s favourite legislator, but his latest proposal looks like winning favourable support from the industry. He wants to create a ‘Space Assembly Line’ in order to ‘fast track’ applications and to demolish barriers to entry for the space and satellite sector.
However, good as this idea is, he also spoke on October 2nd of “Trust in legacy media has now plumeted to an all-time low”. He says that just 8 per cent of Americans have a great deal of trust in legacy media and only 20 per cent have even a fair amount of trust.
On October 6th, Carr launched the FCC’s Space Month, with the aim of speeding up satellite licensing and spectrum reform. He outlined two key proposals.
The first was to update the FCC’s current licensing process with a licensing assembly line, which Carr said would presume uncomplicated satellite and Teleport Earth station applications are in the public interest and thus eligible for expedited approval.
The second would see a revision for siting Earth stations using the upper microwave bands, (the Upper Microwave Flexible Use Service, UMFUS) to enable greater use of spectrum and simplify approvals for operators.
Chairman Carr stressed that he wanted to reverse the “default to no” responses to a “default to yes” attitude.
He argued that the FCC is “riddled” with backward-looking regulations.
His main enemy is China. “Our main competitor in this Space Race 2.0 is the government of China,” he said. “They have their eyes set on dominating in low Earth orbit, and, frankly, up and down every orbit.”
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