America is winning the global race for wireless innovation. That victory rests, in no small part, on a quiet but transformative policy decision made during President Trump’s first term.
The Citizens Broadband Radio Service, or CBRS, has become what experts call “America’s Innovation Band.” The United States now leads the world in private cellular network deployments, and CBRS is the reason why. So why are some now pushing the FCC to change the very rules that made that success possible?
Understanding how CBRS works illuminates what is at stake. CBRS uses a three-tier sharing framework to share the same spectrum, the same radio waves. The first tier protects incumbent federal users, the Navy and satellite operators, who always retain priority. The second tier consists of Priority Access Licenses, or PALs, held by businesses in sectors like education, healthcare, and manufacturing who purchased spectrum rights at FCC auction. The third tier is General Authorized Access which is open to all, but carries no interference protections against the tiers above it.
An automated Spectrum Access System coordinates everything in real time. The result is a marvel of spectrum efficiency: more than 1,000 operators running over 430,000 base stations across virtually every sector of the American economy. Airports, factories, college campuses, NFL stadiums, military facilities, rural broadband providers, all thriving in the same band, side by side, because the power levels are low and calibrated to allow coexistence.
Low power limits are what makes sharing possible. John Deere runs robotics and real-time automation on CBRS in its factories. Miami International Airport depends on it for security systems and runway communications. Rural broadband providers like Amplex use it to deliver reliable internet to communities that traditional wired infrastructure could never reach affordably. The TSMC factory in Arizona, a linchpin of America’s semiconductor independence, relies on CBRS for campus-wide connectivity.
Now certain high-power, exclusive license spectrum interests are pushing proposals at the FCC to raise CBRS power limits.This move would not improve the band. It would destroy it.
Analysis from Valo Analytica makes the math brutally clear. Converting fewer than 2% of CBRS base stations to higher power would eliminate more than 65,000 channels, choking data throughput across the entire ecosystem. A single high-power deployment would preempt shared use across thousands of square kilometers, cutting off the spectrum that 96% of current CBRS operations depend on. Interference would cascade across the band in ways that neither existing technology nor current FCC rules are equipped to manage.
The real-world consequences are crushing. The Valo study showed that interference from a nearby high-power device would slash the coverage range of John Deere’s Illinois office deployment to just 4 to 10 meters—roughly the reach of a pair of wireless earbuds. At Miami International Airport, a single high-power deployment could instantly cut one-third of the airport’s network capacity putting security and safety communications at risk. Amplex’s customers, many of them working from home in rural Ohio, would simply lose their internet connection.
And yet no market demand is driving this change.
The companies pushing for higher power limits are threatened by the competition and innovation that CBRS enables. This is not a consumer benefit. It is a competitive shakedown, dressed up in technical language.
Pro market believers should recognize this for what it is. The Priority Access Licenses in CBRS were acquired through a lawful, competitive FCC auction. Retroactively rewriting the rules and expectations of that auction to bump up power limits—to the benefit of the largest incumbents and at the expense of the innovators who built networks in good faith—is not free market policy. That is merely government picking winners and losers, raising serious Fifth Amendment concernsof regulatory takings. And it sends a chilling message to every future bidder in every future spectrum auction: your rights are only as good as the next administration’s whims.
There is no other band with the ecosystem, the devices, or the infrastructure to absorb what CBRS has built. There is nowhere for these users to go.
The Trump administration built something remarkable with CBRS. More than 430,000 radios deployed. Over 350,000 fixed wireless consumers served. Nine in ten smartphones shipped in America today carry CBRS capability. The United States leads the world in private wireless because of this band and the rules that govern it. In this we are beating China.
The FCC should preserve the current power framework. Protect the private investments. Protect the innovation. Protect America’s lead. Leave CBRS alone.
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