FCC's Brendan Carr Talks Approval Times, Paramount-Warner, Disney 

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
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**Ed Ludlow** (0:07)
Data are increasingly shaping America's space race. The FCC decides who gets access to spectrum, approves satellite communication systems, and is now confronting the next frontier of the space economy, from orbital data centers to direct-to-device connectivity. Joining us now is FCC Chairman Brendan Carr to discuss the future of space communication, spectrum, wireless policy, before we turn to some of the major media issues facing the Commission. Chairman Carr, thank you so much for being back on Bloomberg Tech. Should we start with maybe the more nascent area of SpaceX's business plan, which is orbital data center?
I think a lot of value to the audience and to Americans is, could you just explain how the FCC regulates orbital data center? Why it has a role in oversight of how much material from a compute perspective will be in orbit above the earth?

**Brendan Carr** (1:05)
Yeah, it's a good question. So at the FCC and frankly, all across the Trump administration, we're focused on two things. One, we want to make sure that consumers are right away feeling a difference in their life. Right now, we're seeing that on the connectivity front with speeds are up, prices are down, competition is intensifying. But the second piece goes to your question, which is what are the fundamental regulatory changes we can do that are going to pay off for consumers in the long run? And a lot of that has to do with the emerging space economy. To your point, we're seeing many, many more things go into orbit, whether it's all of this new generation of low-earth orbit satellites or data centers. And so the FCC has a role to play, one, to make sure that everyone has the spectrum access they need in order to launch those. And even things like orbital debris end up hanging off of a lot of the FCC's authorizations. And of course, that's in conjunction with a broader group of regulators as well.

**Ed Ludlow** (2:00)
When SpaceX or another player comes to the FCC seeking approval to deploy data centers in the form factor of a satellite into orbit, what are the considerations by which the FCC decides approval or to block approval?

**Brendan Carr** (2:16)
Well, the first thing for us is we want to go much more quickly. When I took over, we launched what we called a build America agenda. A key piece of that is boosting America's space economy. It used to be when we would get satellite applications that would come in, we would get one or two or three a year, and we would do individualized, bespoke custom reviews. And what we're fundamentally changing is to an assembly line mindset. In fact, we're going to vote this month to change how we run our Space Bureau operations. So it will be objective criteria. And if you hit those, you should expect much faster FCC approvals. In fact, we've cut the backlog of FCC approvals down by about half. We're moving much faster. And so we're giving people objective criteria to hit. That way we can end up improving thousands or hundreds of thousands of applications, whereas before our processes would take us months or years to do a small handful of that.

**Ed Ludlow** (3:10)
Away from orbital data centers, a big focus right now is the wireless networks in the context of space. Prior iterations of the FCC debated and looked at a fourth national wireless network with EchoStar. Right? And I think I'm right in saying Chairman Carr, you were critical of prior approaches to that future market.
What has happened in the interim is that the FCC has handed some of those same licenses to SpaceX for Starlink. What do we interpret through that mechanism?

**Brendan Carr** (3:46)
Well, you're right. There was a mindset several years ago that said we have to have four separate standalone mobile wireless providers, let alone many other competitors that we have in the broader connectivity market. And people said that if you didn't have four, that prices would rise for consumers or speeds would slow down. And we haven't seen that obviously at all. We've completed the process of facilitating Dish EchoStar effectively exiting the market when it comes to mobile wireless, and consumers continue to benefit from a lot of price competition. So it's a great time for consumers, but it's also a really good time for companies because we're taking a lot of the costs, unnecessary costs, out of the system. Whether it's permitting reform, whether it's allowing providers to retire these old copper networks that they had to subsidize in addition to their new networks. And so this old view of having to have four individual mobile wireless providers, or the sky would fall, we didn't buy, and obviously I think the evidence is coming in to show that this new theory is correct.