The global space economy is projected to spike from $613 billion per year to $1 trillion by 2032, according to the Space Foundation. Commercial space is rapidly becoming part of humanity’s critical infrastructure.
Recognizing its vital nature, a 2025 executive order by President Donald Trump calls for American “space superiority.” Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr wants U.S. businesses to “dominate in orbit,” as part of the “Build America” agenda. Even better, the goal of keeping America the world leader in commercial space has near unanimous bipartisan support in Washington.
However, for the U.S. to lead, space and satellite companies will need more wireless airwaves, or “spectrum.” The FCC and the Department of Commerce are working diligently on making more radio channels available for economic activity in space. Radio communications that travel to and from faraway spacecraft space must operate in quiet “neighborhoods” so these “whispers” can be heard without harmful interference from “noisy neighbors.”
Unfortunately, some companies have treated scarce spectrum for space as a speculative venture to buy, hold — and later flip for profit — rather than as vital infrastructure that should be built out to create real value for the American space economy.
Case in point: Ligado Networks. The company has warehoused 45 megahertz of prime L-Band spectrum for nearly two decades. During that time, it has invested little to build any facilities, provided scant service and has lurched from one unworkable scheme to the next while trying to inflate the value of its spectrum licenses in the secondary markets.
Ligado now wants the FCC to hurry up and approve its latest of many schemes: a “partnership” with AST SpaceMobile. The proposal seeks to short-circuit FCC processes while risking significant interference to critical services like GPS. It would also reward decades of wasteful spectrum squatting — behavior Carr has strongly opposed — and would foreclose competition that the White House seeks to foster in orbit.
If there is an antithesis to the “Build America Agenda” in space, it’s Ligado.
Originally licensed to provide mobile satellite service, the company has cycled through four corporate names, multiple bankruptcies and a revolving door of business plans. Instead of meaningfully investing in infrastructure and serving consumers, Ligado has spent two decades pursuing regulatory arbitrage: lobbying the FCC to “rezone” its satellite spectrum for terrestrial use while hoping to cash in on the increased raw value of the airwaves rather than put them to productive use.
Along the way, the company's satellite operations have been so minimal that it now has almost no customers and negligible revenue to show for occupying some of the most valuable spectrum in the country for two decades. And yet, Ligado is suing the federal government for $40 billion — claiming it was wrongly prevented from using spectrum it never meaningfully used in the first place.
Ligado’s latest application to the FCC to partner with AST may give the appearance of finally advancing U.S. goals in space. Under the deal, AST would use Ligado’s spectrum to provide direct-to-device (D2D) satellite broadband — a booming market. But the plan is fatally flawed on both engineering and legal grounds.
Ligado is currently authorized to have a single geostationary satellite parked 22,000 miles above the Earth. The proposed system would replace it with a constellation of 96 low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, dramatically closer to the ground at just 430 miles, with aggregate power levels at the Earth’s surface more than 1,000-times greater than the current system. Plus, those satellites would be constantly moving around the Earth. It is a fundamentally different interference environment — like replacing a dim porch light with a bank of powerful searchlights constantly sweeping the neighborhood.
As revealed in sworn testimony by Inmarsat’s general counsel, Ligado has failed to coordinate the new system with incumbent operators in the L-Band to ensure no harm to those services. Even worse, Ligado’s application claims that its operations are fully coordinated — despite repeated warnings from Inmarsat that this is not the case. If those sworn allegations are accurate, Ligado may have made material misrepresentations to the Commission. Moreover, Ligado has yet to address a range of unanswered technical questions that may impact other L-Band users.
The FCC already has a process to address these problems. When a company proposes a new non-geostationary satellite system, FCC rules require the agency to open a window for competing applications to guard against interference and ensure that multiple providers have a fair shot at using the spectrum.
Ligado wants the FCC to waive those rules so that it can hand its underused spectrum to AST without any competition. Given Ligado’s substantial debt load, the ask is understandable. But the FCC has those rules for good reason.
Satellite spectrum is scarce and valuable. Trump and the FCC both recognize that robust competition is essential to U.S. dominance in the industry. Granting Ligado’s application would not only reward the company’s warehousing and create interference risks, it would ensure that the spectrum isn’t used as efficiently — and by as many companies — as it could be.
The processing round that Ligado wants to skip is precisely the right path forward. It would protect existing services against disruption and send a clear message to all FCC licensees that they are expected to build on their spectrum — not flip it like a speculative stock.
Carr has said the FCC will move “large swaths of underused spectrum into the hands of those who can put it to productive use.” The way to honor it here is to deny Ligado’s application, open a processing round and let the market decide who can best serve the American people with this long-fallow spectrum.
Robert McDowell served as a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission from 2006-2013 and is currently a partner at Cooley LLP where he is chair of its global communications practice.
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