The debate over the Republican majority’s filibuster-proof reconciliation package has dominated much of Washington, but there’s one issue that has been heating up the telecom world: Spectrum.
The Republican chairs of the Senate and House commerce committees, Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Rep. Brett Guthrie (Ky.), want to make more electromagnetic spectrum commercially available. They have a lot of support among the ranks because sales could be in the hundreds of billions and help offset the cost of other GOP priorities.
Mid-band spectrum, in particular, has been a focus for the lawmakers and carriers as they say it is absolutely crucial to boost 5G service in the United States. But much of those frequencies are currently controlled by the Pentagon and defense officials and their allies on the Hill don’t want to give it away.
The brawl has pitted commerce-aligned lawmakers and telecom carriers against national security hawks and the Pentagon.
We’ve written extensively about Cruz and Guthrie’s case for making more spectrum available, and this seems to be where most Republicans stand. But we wanted to take a beat and explore some of the arguments being made against it from the defense hawks.
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) has been a leading opponent against the effort to take the mid-band spectrum away from the Pentagon. He has asked nearly every Defense Department nominee under consideration in the Armed Services Committee whether auctioning off this spectrum is a good idea and they’ve said it really isn’t.
Most recently, as much of Washington turned their attention to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s hearing on Tuesday, when officials were grilled about the Houthis attack inadvertently leaked to The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg on Signal, Rounds asked CIA Director John Ratcliffe about spectrum.
His response echoed what many other officials have said. Here’s Ratcliffe:
And, like many officials and hawks on the Hill, Ratcliffe said the details have to be discussed in a classified setting.
Rounds and others have reinforced that much of the work done on those frequencies is sensitive and can’t be revealed publicly. As we scooped, Rounds, Cruz, Majority Leader John Thune, Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), and Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), another Pentagon ally, received a classified briefing on spectrum last month.
From what has been said publicly, radars and key communications use some of those frequencies. As we reported in our Sunday newsletter, House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) has drawn a red line on those uses and told us his staff is working with Energy & Commerce Committee staff on what bands could be auctioned.
Rounds also told us that spectrum would be key for an eventual U.S. iron dome, an advanced missile defense shield similar to what is used in Israel and has been championed by President Donald Trump.
When it comes to the radars, opponents of the spectrum auctions have said that it would be very expensive to update Navy destroyers that currently use those bands. Those costs could be even larger than the auctions themselves, they’ve said.
Rounds and Pentagon officials have suggested using “dynamic spectrum” in which the bands would be shared between the DoD and commercial use. But they admit the technology isn’t quite there yet and needs further testing. The shared spectrum would also drive down the price tag for the auctions, reducing its revenue-raising capability so coveted by lawmakers.
Cruz, for his part, has pushed back against many of these claims and said that leading in 5G is just as much a national security priority to beat China. As we scooped in our AM edition, he has also blamed Biden-era defense officials and military contractors for a campaign against making more spectrum available.
The next few weeks will test whether this brawl will end in compromise or a continuation of the status quo.
