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Kalpak Gude, general counsel and head of global regulatory at Swarm Technologies Inc., is on a mission to help his company connect the world to low-cost internet through orbiting small satellites.

“There have been fundamental changes where connectivity takes place,” Gude told a U.S. Chamber of Commerce roundtable Tuesday. “We used to build networks where people work. [Now] we need networks everywhere.”

The networks will connect not only people globally, he explained, but also devices in the so-called internet of things.

Swarm Technologies already has several of what engineers call “smallsats” in low orbit. In mid-2020, Gude said, the company has the financial and legal work done to launch a constellation of 150 smallsats.

Swarm hired Gude in January to help with its legal and regulatory issues after the startup last year launched four satellites without regulatory approval. He was not immediately available for comment Tuesday.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission fined Swarm $900,000 in December and mandated it hire a regulatory compliance director.

The Chamber hosted the forum on smallsats, stressing their growing importance in business. As one Chamber speaker put it, the use of low-orbit satellites is becoming so commercially important that “all companies will soon be space companies.”

Gude explained that smallsats can be used in:

• Agriculture to help reduce water and fertilizer requirements through sensory mechanisms while increasing production.

• The automotive industry, especially on safety devices, such as knowing when an airbag deploys and alerting first responders.

• Development in other countries, such as sensing when an important water pump in, say, India, has stopped providing clean water.

• Transportation, energy, shipping and other areas where tracking and sensory observations are vital.

Gude, and other space industry speakers, stressed that the smallsats are fast, relatively inexpensive to build and easy to launch.

While other types of communications can require cell towers as high as a building or satellites as big as a car, smallsats are the size of your hand, he said.

“The United States is the single country that is irreplaceable in this realm,” he added, in urging a speedy and flexible regulatory structure.

Another speaker, however, warned that China is moving aggressively to find its foothold in smallsats space. He also urged a flexible regulatory structure that would allow U.S. companies to move more quickly.

Besides regulation, the roundtable and speakers covered other smallsats topics such as agile encryption, radio frequency interference and safe deorbit assurance.

Discussing the regulatory requirements, keynote speaker Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, said his agency is aware that “we are witnessing a revolution in space” for the first time in 50 years.

“We need to modernize our rules … and streamline our regulatory process with flexible rules that can adapt to new technologies. We want to be the best place in the world to license and launch” new smallsats, he added.

To help “maintain U.S. leadership in this frontier,” Pai said, the commission staff has written new draft regulatory guidelines to make it easier and cheaper to apply for launch approvals. The draft to “streamline the process” will be made public Thursday, he added.

Pai said he hopes to enable the “visionary work by America's space companies” and to “empower the next generation of entrepreneurs.”