AT&T CEO: Congress and Trump Team Should Prioritize Spectrum Pipeline Act Next Year

AT&T CEO John Stankey urged lawmakers and the incoming Trump administration in a Tuesday Fortune opinion essay “to act in favor of broader coverage and lower prices by moving past” conducting more studies on reallocating midband spectrum bands, as the Biden administration has emphasized. The government should instead release those frequencies, Stankey wrote. He also endorsed the 2024 Spectrum Pipeline Act (S-3909), which “reauthorizes the FCC’s auction authority and directs the agency to license mid-band airwaves for full-power mobile broadband services. And because auctions, spectrum clearing, and development of sharing mechanisms can take years, it’s important that Congress act expeditiously next year to make it law.” The proposal, led by Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Ted Cruz, R-Texas, “is a smart spectrum policy that will stimulate investment, and deliver better mobile coverage and capacity, including in underserved areas,” Stankey said: “It’ll also mean more competition in home broadband by facilitating fixed wireless services in geographically remote places that have been historically harder to reach with wired connections.” Should he becomes Senate Commerce chairman in the next Congress, as observers expect, Cruz will likely prioritize the Spectrum Pipeline Act rather than pursue legislation resembling the rival Spectrum and National Security Act (S-4207) Democrats back (see 2410290039). Stankey acknowledged DOD concerns about repurposing midband frequencies that currently include military incumbents but said “true national security requires the soft power that comes with a vibrant, competitive economy that makes America the world’s best place to develop cutting-edge technology and enables robust networks that can carry the essential load during unplanned events.” It’s “in the Pentagon’s interest to make an earnest effort to balance the legitimate needs of the military with those of American consumers and businesses to have access to world-class mobile infrastructure."