Licensed to Wait: The High Cost of Spectrum Delay
America’s wireless future is on hold, pending another study. Federal agencies control much of the spectrum needed to build it—and the process for opening those frequencies rewards incumbents for taking their time.
Sustaining U.S. leadership in wireless technology requires more spectrum—the radio frequencies that carry wireless signals—for fifth- and sixth-generation mobile networks (5G and 6G), next-generation Wi-Fi, and other advanced communications systems. Yet federal agencies pay nominal fees for exclusive use of many of the bands best suited to those innovations. Opening them to commercial services requires reallocating them or arranging shared access. That’s where American spectrum policy repeatedly breaks down.
The obstacles are rarely technical. Procedural friction and agency self-interest make reallocation slow, contentious, and tilted toward inaction. Federal users bear the disruption and risks to their missions when they move, but capture almost none of the gains. Even an agency acting in good faith has reason to defend the status quo.
Meanwhile, agencies bent on delay can turn interference studies into a renewable resource for obstruction. A process meant to resolve technical questions becomes a way to keep them open indefinitely. Incumbents invoke “health,” “public safety,” or “national security” without specifying measurable thresholds against which to test those claims. No completed study can settle a question framed to evade an answer.
The public pays for that delay. A policy aimed at maximizing social welfare would weigh economic security alongside national security. Each year a band remains underused and closed to commercial services, the public forgoes the wireless activity it could otherwise support.
The saga of LightSquared and Ligado offers the clearest illustration of this federal incumbent playbook, the incentives behind it, and the public cost. To prevent a repeat, regulators should fund studies upfront and concurrently, publish firm deadlines, and securely share sensitive information with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) engineers who hold the necessary security clearances. These reforms would help the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the FCC resolve spectrum disputes promptly and on the merits.