Rounds 'Can't Support' Reconciliation Without Lower 3 and 7 GHz Band Exemptions
Senate Armed Services Committee member Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., is threatening to block Senate passage of its budget reconciliation package if Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and others include spectrum legislative language that doesn’t exempt the 3.1-3.45 GHz and 7 GHz bands from potential reallocation for commercial use. Rounds’ declaration Wednesday night created another potential roadblock for spectrum legislation to make it into a negotiated reconciliation deal, even as House GOP leaders celebrated the lower chamber's narrow passage Thursday morning of their One Big Beautiful Bill Act (HR-1). That measure's spectrum title would restore the FCC’s lapsed auction authority through Sept. 30, 2034, and exempts the lower 3 GHz and 5.9-7.1 (6) GHz bands from reallocation.
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“I've shared with [Senate] leadership already that [lower 3 GHz and 7 GHz] will be protected [in a reconciliation package] or I can't support it,” Rounds said in an interview. The House Commerce Committee’s report accompanying its part of HR-1 said it “directs that the frequencies between 7.25 GHz-8.4 GHz [be] excluded from the 600 megahertz requirement,” but critics argued that doesn’t carry statutory weight like exclusionary language would.
Rounds said he doesn’t share Cruz’s “opinion” that President Donald Trump’s statement Tuesday about HR-1’s spectrum language constituted opposition to excluding specific bands from reallocation (see 2505210058). Cruz “may seriously try” to pass spectrum language sans exemptions, Rounds said, but he will object unless the carve-outs are included and extend “for as long as [the FCC has] spectrum authority” via the statute. “I’ll let [the intelligence community] identify” what a 7 GHz exemption should look like, since it's concerned about the band, Rounds said.
Rounds also disputed that Trump's statement was an endorsement of HR-1's spectrum language, although it referenced the proposal’s mandate for 600 MHz of reallocated spectrum (see 2505200058). Trump “said we needed more spectrum, but he didn't specify which part” the federal government should reallocate, Rounds said. The White House also wants the proposed Golden Dome to protect the U.S. from missile attacks, similar to Israel’s Iron Dome defense system, “to proceed, and you can't do [that] without protecting” the lower 3 GHz and 7 GHz bands.
House Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie of Kentucky was among the lower chamber GOP leaders who celebrated Thursday morning after lawmakers passed HR-1 by one vote, 215-214. “House Republicans have delivered on the promises we and [Trump] made to the American people,” Guthrie said. “I look forward to working with the Senate to pass the bill and deliver it to the President’s desk.” The House Rules Committee decided not to allow votes on a trio of Democratic amendments aimed at modifying the spectrum language.
WISPA is “encouraged” that the House passed HR-1 with the 6 GHz carve-out intact but still “harbors strong concerns” about the measure as reconciliation action heads to the Senate, CEO David Zumwalt said in a statement. “The exclusions in [HR-1] only extend to the 600 megahertz of spectrum” the federal government identifies for the mandated pipeline but wouldn’t “stop the FCC from auctioning off portions, or all, of the excluded bands from the agency’s general auction authority.” He also noted that the measure doesn’t exempt the 3550-3650 MHz citizens broadband radio service band, which DOD proposed as an alternative for reallocation to protect the lower 3 GHz band (see 2504040068).