FCC Not Planning Tribal Licensing Window for Upper C-Band Auction
The agency adopted CTIA’s proposed interference limits
WASHINGTON, July 1, 2026 – The Federal Communications Commission is not looking to allow tribes to apply for free spectrum licenses in its upper C-band auction next year.
“While we remain committed to exploring opportunities that promote connectivity in historically unserved or underserved areas including Tribal lands, we ultimately do not find that a Tribal licensing window is viable in the instant context,” the agency wrote in the draft of its rules.
The agency announced Tuesday it would be voting next month on final upper C-band auction rules and released the text of the draft order Wednesday afternoon.
In the FCC’s 2.5 GigaHertz (GHz) auction in 2020, it allowed Tribal entities to apply for free licenses for seven months before the auction, resulting in more than 360 tribes securing licenses. After edits to a proposal last year from FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez’s office, the agency asked about instituting one in the upper C-band auction.
Tribes and consumer advocates urged the agency to go that route. Tribal lands were unlikely to see deployments from auction winners, but still needed the additional connectivity, and could deploy networks themselves if they had access to the spectrum, the advocates argued.
The agency said in its draft that the upper C-band auction differed from 2.5 GHz in multiple ways, namely a Congressional timeline for completing the auction before July 2027.
There likely wouldn’t be time for a Tribal window given the deadline, the draft said, dismissing arguments that the window could be held concurrently with the auction.
The agency also pointed to what it said was a less mature equipment ecosystem that, combined with delayed deployments to allow for airplane retrofits, would create “a substantial delay” before tribes could reasonably turn on the airwaves.
CTIA, the wireless industry group, had opposed a Tribal licensing window on the grounds that it would take too much time. The group also opposed a Tribal window in the recently concluded AWS-3 auction, where the FCC also decided against one.
CTIA CEO Ajit Pai led the FCC during the 2.5 GHz auction.
The Wednesday draft said the FCC was unlikely to institute Tribal windows in other auctions in the near future.
The 2.5 GHz Tribal window “was largely predicated on the unique circumstances present in that band at the time,” which are “unlikely to be replicated in future candidate bands for auction which tend to have significant Federal and non-Federal incumbencies that must be addressed,” the agency wrote.
Coexistence rules
The agency adopted interference rules that CTIA proposed in a filing posted last week. The group had clashed with the aviation industry on the issue, since the upper C-band is adjacent to spectrum used by critical airplane components.
CTIA had initially argued the Federal Aviation Administration’s analysis was too conservative, and would effectively add technical restrictions on mobile carriers without a safety benefit for flyers.
The compromise rules the group proposed last week were “more restrictive than warranted but will advance robust 5G,” it said in the filing. It would allow upper C-band mobile operators to choose from two thresholds, one of which is in place for lower C-band spectrum already in use.
“We find that adoption of these alternative [out-of-band emission] requirements across the C-band will promote ongoing coexistence with post-retrofit radio altimeters without any additional measures in place,” the agency wrote.
The FAA is on board with the plan. In a statement Tuesday, the agency said it was confident mobile operators could coexist with its new generation of altimeters, and that the FCC’s policy included “key safeguards” for the gear.
Antenna heights would be limited to 450 feet under the draft, something CTIA and the aviation industry agreed on.
The draft said that the FCC anticipated new technical data on altimeter designs, which have not yet been finalized, could result in the agency changing certain assumptions.
Acceleration payments
The FCC is planning to have auction winners pay incumbent satellite providers to vacate the upper C-band as quickly as possible, like it did after the lower C-band auction. The companies — SES, Eutelsat and Telesat — are likely to split billions in these acceleration payments.
SES, the largest incumbent, and Eutelsat disagreed on how the agency should allocate those payments and each put forward its r own methodologies. Eutelsat’s plan would still see the company receive a minority of the acceleration payments, but would give the company a larger share than SES’s plan.
The FCC rejected both companies’ proposals. The agency said it would try to measure the value of spectrum that would be blocked from mobile use if the companies did not clear their airwaves quickly, and distribute the incentive payments accordingly.
The amounts that would be paid to each operator under this scheme were redacted in the draft rules, but agency staff told reports Tuesday that redacted figures would be unredacted in the adopted order.
In a footnote, the draft did say some of Eutelsat’s estimates for its utilization of the upper C-band were “significantly higher” than other estimates the agency had seen based on the same data.
SES recently estimated it would cost $3.6 billion to clear 160 megahertz in the band, and Eutelsat forecast costs totaling about $750 million. After the lower C-band auction, satellite incumbents were paid about $9.7 billion in extra acceleration payments to incentivize vacating the spectrum.
The agency is also requiring auction winners to pay rebates to airlines that will be retrofitting their fleets’ altimeters to accommodate the extra interference from mobile use in the upper C-band. Airlines have estimated that it could cost at least $4.5 billion.
Updated rebate cost estimates from the FAA were also redacted in the FCC’s draft. The draft would direct the agency’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau to draw up a reimbursement scheme and seek comment on it by Oct. 6, 2026.
