With most US legislative action at the federal level now boiling down to the annual partisan brawl over enormous, catch-all budget bills, the stakes for the Trump administration’s deeply divisive omnibus package were high, and for US wireless operators, restoring spectrum auction authority at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was the biggest-ticket item in the bill.
In theory, the reinstated authority and auction mandate included in the legislation – signed into law on July 4, 2025 – would spare all interested parties another interminable round of wait-and-see without a functional spectrum pipeline.
Restoring functionality: The FCC regains auction authority and gets a mandate
The FCC lost its spectrum auction authority way back in March 2023, as the capability became a strategic bargaining chip in the political impasse and long-running staring contest between the wireless industry and the US military over fate of the 3.1 GHz-3.45 GHz band range (currently used by the US Department of Defense).
Fixing that lack of auction authority was undoubtedly terrific news for the wireless industry. Spectrum is foundational to wireless service, and establishing a cogent, well-functioning spectrum pipeline is necessary to keeping that foundation strong.
Moreover, the spending bill mandates that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) identify 600 MHz of spectrum located within 1.3 GHz and 10 GHz in the next two years for “reallocation to non-federal use on an exclusive, licensed basis.” The FCC must then auction at least 200 MHz of that spectrum within three years, with the rest to follow within six years.
Expect fierce lobbying and significant obfuscation around CBRS and 6 GHz
The lack of any carve-out for CBRS or 6 GHz will kick off a storm of lobbying activity. Both the heavyweight US cable operators and smaller wireless internet service providers (WISPs) alike will try to keep those band ranges from becoming the province of exclusive, high-power licenses of the sort favored by the leading mobile network operators (MNOs).
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By GlobalDataFor the cable giants, the fight will be about both staving off increased competition from 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) and maintaining access to what could still prove an important offload mechanism for their mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) outfits. For WISPs, the prospect of losing access to such band ranges is more existential – long before one even considers how it could damage their suddenly much rosier federal funding prospects.
The only real certainty is the inevitable lobbying fervor to come: Dark money will flow, rational discussions on the technical merits will be scarce, and mouthpieces representing all vested parties will muddy the waters, casting aspersions on other camps’ motives, development capabilities, and investment acumen.
BEAD gets partisan, chaotic, and short-sighted, sacrificing efficacy
After pressing pause on the $42.5bn Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) infrastructure funding program in March 2025 – just as many states had finally gotten close to putting shovels in the ground – the NTIA issued overhauled guidance for the program in late June 2025, injecting an emphasis on ‘tech neutrality’ and jettisoning the fiber preference included in BEAD’s initial bipartisan passage in 2021.
This alone would open the door wide for satellite players and WISPs to prevent many locations within their operational footprint from appearing as unserved locations on broadband maps associated with the funding opportunity. On top of that, however, NTIA has also inserted an additional sub-grantee round, which all states must now observe to get their BEAD plans approved by the federal government and unlock the promised funding.
Specifically, that added step – known as the ‘Benefit of the Bargain’ round – will allow WISPs and satellite players the opportunity to submit lower-cost offers for any BEAD-eligible locations.
The combination of the new guidance’s tech neutrality and the open window to undercut fiber providers on deployment cost represents a massive potential tilting of the playing field away from fiber players. However, the new uncertainty around CBRS and 6 GHz will see some state broadband offices put a worried asterisk on claims from WISPs leaning heavily on that spectrum for their FWA services’ long-term capability to serve BEAD addresses. If the future of that spectrum is in doubt, so too is the future of such WISPs
