FCC chairman Brendan Carr issued what is seen as a significant vote of confidence for AST SpaceMobile during a press conference. Carr said the US wanted to “lead the world” with AST’s technology.

“If you step back,” he said, “what AST is doing in significant part, or maybe exclusively in the AST [cellular] sector, is working on direct-to-device technology, and we think that direct-to-device, where you go straight from a LEO satellite right to a smartphone, is one of the more significant technology advancements that’s going to take place and is taking place now and over the next couple of years.”

“And one of the things that we did when we came into leadership here is we put together a plan to make sure that the US leads the world in direct-to-device technology,” he added.

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Tags: AST SpaceMobile, Brendan Carr, FCC