House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Richard Hudson, R-N.C., said Thursday that he opposes language in the Senate's FY 2026 National Defense Authorization Act version (S-2296) that would give the DOD and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman authority to essentially veto commercial use of the 3.1-3.45 and 7.4-8.4 GHz bands. Hudson said during a Punchbowl News event that his next priority as Communications chair will be to enact legislation aimed at easing broadband permitting rules, despite Democrats’ recent criticism of a mostly GOP-led set of proposals during a Sept. 18 hearing (see 2509180069).

A tug-of-war is continuing in the Senate over language from the FY 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (S-2296) that Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said last month would give the DOD and the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman excessive authority to veto commercial use of the 3.1-3.45 and 7.4-8.4 GHz bands (see 2509100064). The Senate Armed Services Committee approved the spectrum language in Section 1564, but Cruz filed an amendment in September to remove the proposal. He's also negotiating to remove it as part of a manager's amendment (see 2509110073). The House-passed FY26 NDAA (HR-3838) doesn't include similar language.

The citizens broadband radio service (CBRS) band has moved beyond the experimental stage and demonstrated its effectiveness, Salt Point Strategies’ Dave Wright said last week during a webinar hosted by consulting firm Senza Fili. CBRS “works,” said Wright, former president of the OnGo Alliance, which promotes the CBRS. “We’ve been doing it for five years. We’ve got 420,000 base station radios operating in the band,” and “we’ve had zero reports of interference” to the military systems that share the spectrum.

The Trump administration is making its support increasingly clear for dedicating the 6 GHz band to Wi-Fi, WifiForward Executive Director Mary Brown said Wednesday. The FCC dedicated the band to unlicensed use during the first Trump administration and has indicated continued support for that position, but that doesn’t mean issues have gone away, she said. Brown and other officials spoke during a Broadband Breakfast webinar on the outlook for the next World Radiocommunication Conference in 2027.

The U.S. “got lazy” in the last 15 or so years about participating in standards-setting bodies and paid the price with China dictating standards for 5G, said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., at SCTE’s TechExpo event Tuesday in Washington. “China flooded the zone,” he said, while the U.S. hasn't been sending as many people to standards-setting bodies. China’s 5G success is a “wake-up call,” and industry and government should agree that the U.S. has “got to get back in the game” and invest resources in standards-setting efforts.

The Benefit of the Bargain (BoB) version of BEAD is shaping up to be "a tremendous success," with state plans to date coming in $15 billion under what they were allocated, NTIA head Arielle Roth said Monday. Speaking at SCTE's TechExpo event in Washington, Roth said NTIA is also pressing states in some cases to submit cheaper final proposals.

Ten Senate Republicans want to mitigate parts of the GOP’s compromise on a spectrum pipeline framework, adopted in July via the budget reconciliation package, amid an ongoing push to excise language in the FY 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (S-2296) that would give the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman authority to veto commercial use of the 3.1-3.45, 7 and 8 GHz bands (see 2509100064).

NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth announced Wednesday that she's sending a letter to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr asking the agency to launch an auction of the 1675-1680 MHz band. It would be the first 5 MHz of the 500 MHz that NTIA is required to identify for auction under the reconciliation package, signed into law in July (see 2507070045). Carr aide Arpan Sura said the FCC is “laser-focused” on the upper C band for what is likely to be the only major spectrum auction in the next few years. Both spoke at NTIA’s spectrum policy symposium.

The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology on Tuesday approved a waiver sought by Lumi United Technology for an ultra-wideband (UWB) door lock system that would operate in the 6-10 GHz frequency range (see 2504110043). “We find nothing in the record to indicate that Lumi’s devices would differ from other UWB devices such that they would pose an increased risk of causing harmful interference to authorized radio services,” OET said in docket 25-102.

AT&T will be able to deploy the 3.45 GHz spectrum that it plans to buy from EchoStar almost immediately after regulators clear the purchase, said Jenifer Robertson, AT&T's general manager of mass markets, at a Citi financial conference Thursday. AT&T CFO Pascal Desroches said at a Bank of America conference that the company was immediately interested in the spectrum when it became clear that EchoStar might sell some of its large portfolio.