Trump Spectrum Policies Still Emerging Along With Changes at NTIA

Things may not get clearer soon, especially amid speculation that Charles Cooper, NTIA Office of Spectrum Management associate administrator, may leave the agency, industry officials said. However, a former NTIA official and others said Monday that Cooper plans on staying. In addition, multi-stakeholder meetings about the lower 3 and 7/8 GHz studies were supposed to occur this month, but there’s no word if they are still scheduled, officials said.

Cooper, an engineer, took his current post in July 2019, after six years at the FCC. His predecessor, Paige Atkins, held the job for just over four years, and it took nearly a year to replace her during the first Trump administration (see 1906070021).

People leaving NTIA and other parts of the government is a potential concern, said a lawyer with wireless carrier clients. The lawyer noted that, historically, the person serving as associate administrator doesn’t stay for many years because it's a demanding position. The administration has announced plans for staffing cuts across the government.

The administration hasn’t made “much progress, and things seem to fall between [chairs] as the chairs get reshuffled,” said Recon Analytics’ Roger Entner.

Cooley’s Robert McDowell counseled patience. "We are only 50 days into the Trump administration. So it is not surprising that we do not yet have a spectrum plan of action yet,” said the former FCC commissioner. He noted that Arielle Roth, Trump’s nominee for NTIA chief, has yet to even have a confirmation hearing.

“Other ongoing multiyear events, however, such as spectrum auction legislation as part of the reconciliation package and the ongoing studies launched by the Biden administration, are filling the vacuum in the meantime,” McDowell said.

The administration has sent mixed signals on those topics.

New Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick indicated at his confirmation hearing in January that he favored giving carriers some access to the bands, which are used by DOD and other agencies. “With all due respect, if I’m going to be your secretary of Commerce, I kind of lean toward commerce,” he said at the time. “I’d like to try to help us drive some of that spectrum towards our businesses to free us to be the leader in spectrum in the world.”

Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth indicated during his confirmation hearing that he leans against repurposing portions of the 3.1-3.45 GHz band for commercial wireless use (see 2501140082). Congress is debating legislation that would reauthorize the FCC’s spectrum auction authority, which lapsed two years ago.

“A lot of legislation, including potentially the reconciliation bill, is dependent on sorting out whether the FCC will be able to auction those bands,” emailed Joe Kane, director-broadband and spectrum policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. That would be difficult without the “structured dialogue that the National Spectrum Strategy provides,” he said: “Moving forward with studies will be beneficial to all stakeholders in that process. So, I expect the administration to clarify things soon.”

Complicating spectrum questions further, however, is the role that presidential adviser Elon Musk, who leads SpaceX, is likely to play in Trump administration technical decisions, New Street’s Blair Levin noted Monday. New Street predicted last fall that Musk would emerge as “the most powerful force in telecom policy, elevating satellite priorities over the policy priorities of traditional communications networks,” Levin said.

Levin cited an order in which the FCC agreed last week to SpaceX's requested waiver of the aggregate out-of-band power flux density limits that the FCC adopted in its 2024 supplemental coverage from space order, siding with technical studies from the Musk-owned company and T-Mobile versus AT&T’s analysis and opposition from Verizon and EchoStar (see 2503070030).

The DOD continues opposing full-power licensed use of the lower 3 GHz band, which means AT&T’s proposal from last year about moving the citizens broadband radio service (CBRS) to those frequencies may make sense, Entner said.

AT&T argued that the CBRS allocation at 3.55-3.7 GHz should be expanded and relocated to 3.1-3.3 GHz (see 2410090037). The former CBRS band would then be auctioned for licensed, full-power use. “Let the people who want to share and not pay full power prices actually share,” Entner said Monday. Most commenters panned that proposal (see 2412060042).

Spectrum for the Future said in a press release Monday that top national security experts and members of the Senate Armed Services Committee are speaking out “about expensive and dangerous proposals to force the military to abandon vital spectrum for exclusive licensing by the Big Three cellular carriers.”

Instead, these leaders support “dynamic spectrum-sharing models, which can open valuable bands for commercial use without interfering with mission-critical national security functions, including proposals for enhanced missile defense under an 'iron' or 'golden' dome,” said the group, which is backed by the cable industry and other advocates of sharing.