GOP Budget Bill Includes Massive Spectrum Handout To Large Wireless Carriers, Hurting WiFi Speeds

From the massive handout to already-wealthy Americans to the likely fatal cuts to Medicaid, there’s plenty to be disgusted by in the GOP Budget bill approved by Congress today.

But there’s also a lot of little gifts in there to corporations that will likely fly under the radar, including a massive new handout of valuable federal wireless spectrum holdings to wireless giants like AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. It’s just the wireless industry’s latest reward for being utterly feckless, sniveling boot lickers in the face of historic authoritarian corruption.

Senator Ted Cruz recently killed a program to provide free Wi-Fi to poor, rural school kids because the plan upset large carriers like AT&T. That was followed up by efforts to pull billions in federal funding from states that attempt any sort of AI oversight. Cruz’s latest telecom industry-friendly effort involves a massive handout of valuable federal spectrum to wireless giants like AT&T.

Cruz’s plan could take frequencies away from Wi-Fi and other, more publicly beneficial wireless efforts, and reallocate them for the exclusive use of wireless carriers: 

“The Cruz plan could take 200 MHz or more away from the 1,200 MHz currently allocated to Wi-Fi between 5.925 and 7.125 GHz. It could also take spectrum from the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS), which goes from 3.55 to 3.7 GHz.”

That means potentially slower Wi-Fi standards overall. The Wi-Fi 6E standard added support for 6 GHz spectrum, and the in-development Wi-Fi 7 is supposed to take full advantage of the band. Neither will wind up being as useful, fast, and robust if Congress just dumps a massive trove of that spectrum into the lap of AT&T.

The move would likely be particularly harmful for efforts to provide major connectivity at places where a lot of people gather, including schools and libraries. The move also has the potential to harm Internet of Things (IOT) development, given 6GHz’s particular benefits for indoor wireless use.

It’s ironic (?) because Trump’s first term FCC boss Ajit Pai was key in allocating the 6 GHz band to Wi-Fi in the first place back in 2020. Now that he’s shifted over to being the top lobbyist for the wireless industry, he’s playing a starring role in ensuring this public resource is handed over to major carriers.

Before Pai was a lobbyist, his FCC argued that “making the whole band available for Wi-Fi “promotes more efficient and productive use of the spectrum,” while “repurposing large portions of the 6 GHz band for new licensed services would diminish the benefits of such use to the American public.”

Funny how a new job as a lobbyist changed his outlook. New Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr is also busy trying to transfer a massive swath of valuable spectrum from Dish Network (which the first Trump FCC created as a distracted from industry consolidation) to Elon Musk’s Starlink Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite broadband network.

While wireless industry lobbyists insist the industry needs more spectrum, privately, many carriers like AT&T are telling investors they don’t really need it. They’re just pushing for a major chunk of 6 GHz spectrum because they can, and thanks to Trump 2.0, we’ve entered the golden age of corruption where the public interest is the very last thing on anybody’s mind.