OPINION:
Citizens Broadband Radio Service, or CBRS for short, sounds like another buzzy acronym from Washington, but don’t be fooled.
The CBRS is one of the most successful free market, principled telecom policies of which you’ve never heard. It’s a prime example of how principled public policy can drive significant technological progress.
However, this consumer choice advancement faces an unexpected threat: pressure to dismantle the very framework that made it such a success story. All Americans who stand with the free market, competition and prosperity, including Republicans, must protect CBRS from proposed government overreach.
During President Trump’s first term, the Federal Communications Commission ushered in a unique American approach to the way the government provides commercial access to our nation’s wireless spectrum through the CBRS auction. As our airwaves became increasingly more crowded with commercial and federal incumbent users, the Trump administration and the FCC created a novel system in the CBRS band, one in which hundreds of companies and nontraditional users could either bid for licenses or generally operate in a shared approach with other federal incumbents in the same band.
This dynamic spectrum-sharing approach is a textbook example of innovative governance and market-driven principles in action centered on property rights, regulatory certainty, limited government and competition. CBRS expanded access, increased competition and opened the doors to new market entrants. Critically, it did so without sacrificing national security.
The U.S. Navy maintains priority in the band. No harmful interference has occurred, even as hundreds of other users operate around them. That’s a powerful demonstration of how innovation and national defense can coexist. Thanks to Trump administration leadership, nontraditional sectors such as health care, transportation, utilities and manufacturing benefit from secure, lower-cost, flexible connectivity options afforded by CBRS.
The results speak for themselves: The auction attracted 228 winning bidders, nearly 10 times more participants than traditional exclusive-use spectrum auctions. Today, more than 400,000 CBRS radios are deployed, powering private 5G networks in hospitals and airports, precision manufacturing operations and rural broadband services. Additionally, new entrants in the mobile wireless sector, including cable operators, are providing more competition and lowering prices for consumers thanks to CBRS.
However, some are pushing to unwind this success, lobbying the federal government to forcibly reallocate CBRS licenses. These licenses were lawfully acquired in a fair, open auction, but the push is to forcibly grab those licenses and grant them to a few large, “most-favored” wireless players.
Make no mistake: This would amount to government-led seizure of private property.
Retroactively changing the terms of these licenses isn’t just bad policy; it’s a direct attack on property rights and a dangerous precedent for future spectrum auctions. Innovation-minded property rights advocates should be alarmed by any proposal that allows Washington to pick winners and losers, especially when it involves stripping settled rights from legitimate businesses and handing them to politically connected corporations. This is exactly the kind of regulatory favoritism that undermines free markets.
Such action will impede the many results that CBRS has delivered.
CBRS is powering private, secure networks in places such as Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, which relies on the service to manage mission-critical operations across 30,000 employees. It’s enabling American manufacturing giants such as John Deere to connect tens of thousands of factory devices in real time. It’s helping the farmers, manufacturers, health care providers and small businesses that form the backbone of America compete on their own terms without depending on telecom or wireless gatekeepers.
Congress is advancing legislation to reauthorize the FCC’s auction authority, but the proposal now moving through it potentially jeopardizes innovative sharing models, like CBRS, by tipping the scales in favor of exclusive-use models that give our nation’s airwaves to a few companies. The bill outlines a pipeline of 800 megahertz, including 500 MHz of federal and 300 MHz of nonfederal spectrum, all for exclusive high-power use.
Although there is clearly a need for more commercially available spectrum, making that spectrum available to just a few undermines innovation made under Mr. Trump and, critically, derails our global efforts to beat China.
Any long-term spectrum policy must protect, not displace, the progress already made through CBRS.
CBRS is what successful pro-innovation leadership looks like. The U.S. needs more of that if we want to remain globally competitive, especially as China ramps up its wireless infrastructure. Now is not the time to walk away from this success. It’s time to double down.
Mr. Trump and his administration got it right the first time by championing what CBRS represents: a free market system that rewards innovation. That legacy is worth protecting and should be scaled up and held up as a blueprint for future spectrum policy and the future of American technological leadership.
• Bartlett Cleland is the executive director of the Innovation Economy Alliance.
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