Spectrum allocation is a very complicated game. It must balance the rights and priorities of many stakeholders, including the DoD and other federal spectrum users, commercial wireless players, new NGSO systems and legacy GSO satellites. And with the FCC potentially altering long-established patterns of spectrum allocation, and a dynamic sharing mechanism scheduled to be demonstrated in November, there’s no telling where the pieces will fall. Who comes out on top: the FCC’s Space Bureau? Wireless? SpaceX? Legacy GEO, which has managed to hold onto its precious bandwidths for decades? For the past several months, the FCC—led by new head of the Space Bureau, Jay Schwarz—has made a concerted effort to streamline and reform satellite licensing processes. It has also announced the intention to open several new sections of bandwidth, including a proposal to open up the lower 37 GHz band, and adopted new sharing rules on the 37 band to encourage wireless innovation. In May, the FCC also proposed a rulemaking that would unleash spectrum across twelve additional bands, including the 12, 42 and 51 GHz bands.