Ajit Pai to Lead CTIA, Wireless Lobby Announces

DALLAS, March 12, 2025 – Former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai will take the helm at CTIA, the wireless association, starting April 1, the major 5G industry group announced Wednesday. 

“I am honored to lead CTIA,” Pai said in a statement. “Together, we will work to ensure that our nation’s spectrum and infrastructure policies promote U.S. global wireless leadership and keep consumers on the leading edge of innovation.”

Pai led the FCC under President Donald Trump’s administration and was involved in Trump’s transition team after he won the 2024 election, giving CTIA a well-connected advocate before the federal government. 

While at the FCC, Pai instituted multiple rules making it easier to deploy 5G infrastructure, exempting small-cell projects from environmental and historical reviews and making it more difficult for local governments to block projects. The review exemptions were overturned by the DC Circuit but the restrictions on local oversight largely survived legal challenges.

Pai also oversaw the FCC’s C-Band auction in 2020, which brought in more than $80 billion and gave mobile carriers 280 megahertz of additional spectrum for their wireless networks.

“The wireless future is here. And the best is yet to come,” Pai wrote in an X post Wednesday.

Currently, CTIA and the wireless industry are eager to get more spectrum in the hands of 5G carriers, with the FCC’s auction authority lapsed since March 2023. The group has pushed for a restoration of that authority coming with a mandate to sell off a certain quantity of licensed airwaves, something supported by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas. Republicans are angling to restore the agency’s auction authority in a budget reconciliation bill this year.

The idea of including a pipeline has been met with heavy opposition from the cable industry, which competes for broadband customers with the carriers’ fixed wireless service, and the Defense Department, which views the prospect as a mandate to relocate systems from the coveted lower 3 GHz band. CTIA has emphasized it would be content to somehow coexist on a part of the band with the military.

CTIA is looking to promote the use of licensed spectrum generally, as opposed to unlicensed or dynamic sharing models that allow more users on a given band, but make the airwaves less suited for mobile networks and the carriers’ increasingly popular fixed wireless broadband services. 

There’s also a chance Elon Musk’s satellite company SpaceX will want a slice of upper C-band spectrum. The mobile industry had celebrated FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s announcement that the agency was looking into repurposing the airwaves as a clear-cut victory, but analysts were quick to point out SpaceX had an existing petition to use the band for direct-to-device service. Musk, a major financial backer of Trump's campaign, is still a close advisor to the president and is aiding his effort to slash and consolidate power over the fedral bureaucracy.

Pai’s “leadership at CTIA will be critical to drive continued wireless growth and connectivity across America. We look forward to working with Ajit and CTIA to make more wireless spectrum available and strengthen wireless innovation within the industry,” Rhonda Johnson, AT&T's executive vice president of regulatory affairs, said in a statement.

Pai will take over from Meredith Attwell Baker, who had led CTIA since 2014 and announced her retirement in December.