Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr claims the agency has slashed its satellite approval times in half as it prepares for a flurry of applications.

Speaking on Bloomberg TV, Carr said the agency would previously get “two to three” applications per year, with it opting for what he described as “bespoke, individualized, custom reviews.”

The agency lead said the FCC was now “fundamentally changing” to an “assembly line mindset” to make approvals faster in order to meet potential influxes of “thousands or hundreds-of-thousands of applications.”

Satellite connectivity has quickly become the next playground, with the likes of Amazon Leo, the AT&T- and Verizon-backed AST SpaceMobile, and Canada’s Telesat set to challenge SpaceX's Starlink.

Carr said the FCC was “really excited” about direct-to-cell (D2C), also known as direct-to-device (D2D), in which satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO) can provide connectivity directly to unmodified handsets without the need for traditional towers.

Carr said he wants “every single” competitor to do well and that the emerging market’s success was a key focus for the Trump administration. Carr, however, rebuffed claims that the agency had previously shown favoritism to Elon Musk’s Starlink, owing to the billionaire’s prior backing for the president.

“The reality is we are uplifting every single operator or business that’s in the space economy,” Carr said. “We’re taking actions that benefit Amazon Leo, that benefit many smaller providers as well … there are many, many companies that are benefiting from our new mindset at the FCC, which is to go faster with these approvals. We don’t want to get stuck navel gazing.”

One such beneficiary of this revised application mindset in the past week alone was Amazon, which was granted a waiver that would have required it to have half of its planned 3,232-satellite Leo constellation in orbit by July 30. The conditions were part of its license to operate, which was granted in 2020 under the prior brand name of Project Kuiper.

Further to its satellite push, the FCC previously changed rules that would allow satellite systems to share the same neutral-host ground station. The change meant that operators would no longer be required to identify a specific satellite, with only a simple FCC notification needed for each new link.

But in Carr’s words to Bloomberg, the agency is “pushing hard” on spectrum and not just for D2C. The agency plans to hold a vote later this month to create an auction that would see it sell 160 megahertz (MHz) of new C-band spectrum aimed at 5G and 6G.

Satellite vendors, too, are snapping up their own spectrum to support burgeoning D2D services, with SpaceX, for example, picking the bones of EchoStar for its spectrum. Carr said such purchases will help operators “stand alone and offer [services] in complement to existing connectivity services.”