FCC Chairman Brendan Carr emphasized Tuesday that he was “ready to go” with what the commission said would be a suspension of “most operations” after midnight Wednesday if Congress couldn't reach a deal on a continuing resolution to extend federal appropriations past Tuesday night, as most observers expected. Meanwhile, the Commerce Department said more than 77% of NTIA’s 600 staff will remain at work following an appropriations lapse, in part because of spectrum funding included in Republicans’ reconciliation package, previously known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (see 2507030056).
An upper C-band auction is unlikely to start in FY 2026, the FCC Office of Economics and Analytics said in an annual update on projected auction activity in the next fiscal year, which begins Wednesday. The report projected that the AWS-3 reauction will get underway but didn’t provide additional timing details. The report was posted in Monday’s Daily Digest. “In the next twelve months, the Commission will also consider competitive bidding for licenses for spectrum in other services in its inventory that is well-suited for 5G and has been licensed in prior auctions, such as, without limitation, 600 MHz spectrum,” the report said.
T-Mobile and Grain submitted to the FCC various documents on their pending low-band spectrum transaction. Filed Monday in docket 25-178, the documents were fully redacted. Grain Management agreed to buy T-Mobile's 800 MHz spectrum in exchange for cash and Grain's 600 MHz spectrum portfolio (see 2503210033). Grain plans to work with utilities and others to deploy services using the 800 MHz spectrum.
SpaceX expects that the spectrum it's buying from EchoStar, along with the technology in the satellites it plans to deploy, will allow the company to provide LTE-like service. The 50 MHz of spectrum that SpaceX will get from EchoStar "will deliver unparalleled performance" to off-the-shelf mobile phones and IoT devices, SpaceX said Friday in an application seeking approval of the transfer. The $17 billion cash-and-stock deal, announced earlier this month, came shortly after EchoStar also agreed to sell its 3.45 GHz and 600 MHz licenses to AT&T (see 2509080052).
Forced to abandon its plans for a terrestrial mobile network of its own, EchoStar is pivoting to what CEO Hamid Akhavan calls a "hybrid MVNO" (mobile virtual network operator) model, where its Boost Mobile business will use AT&T's mobile network and SpaceX's direct-to-device capacity.
With EchoStar selling spectrum to AT&T and SpaceX that was key to its terrestrial mobile plans, the company's focus will be on a hybrid mobile virtual network operator model for its Boost Mobile business, executives said this morning at World Space Business Week in Paris. Under that hybrid MVNO model, Boost will use SpaceX direct-to-device service and AT&T mobile service, paired with Boost's cloud-based core network, CEO Hamid Akhavan said.
Despite continuing questions about how quickly major wireless providers really want the next major spectrum auction, the FCC is under the gun to hold an upper C-band auction in just two years. But industry experts told us that, as was said of the baseball field in 1989’s Field of Dreams, if the FCC holds an auction the carriers will come.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, warned Wednesday that a provision in the FY 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (S-2296) would give the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman authority to veto commercial use of the lower 3 and 7/8 GHz bands. Cruz told an NTIA spectrum symposium (see 2509100051) that he will fight that provision in Section 1564 of the bill. “To be clear, this is not consultation or collaboration on spectrum management,” Cruz said.
SpaceX’s purchase of wireless licenses from EchoStar, announced Monday, wasn’t a surprise (see 2509080052), AT&T CEO John Stankey said Tuesday at a Goldman Sachs conference. “I'd probably argue that that may be the highest and best use of that spectrum for a variety of reasons because it does harmonize very well globally.”
The FCC dropping its twin probes against EchoStar seemingly shows that the agency is all for EchoStar selling its AWS-4 and H-block spectrum to SpaceX and its 3.45 GHz and 600 MHz licenses to AT&T, wireless and spectrum experts told us. Some also said the SpaceX deal could open the door to the satellite operator becoming a wireless competitor.