FCC Spectrum Allocation to AT&T’s FirstNet Illegal, Challengers Say
Groups in favor of the move are also suing; they want the agency to move faster.
WASHINGTON, June 10, 2025 – A Federal Communications Commission plan to allocate potentially valuable public safety spectrum to AT&T’s FirstNet is illegal, challengers told federal judges last week.
A group supporting the FCC plan argued the agency hadn’t gone far enough to get airwaves into FirstNet’s hands quickly.
The FCC moved in October 2024 to begin the process of allowing FirstNet, the nationwide first responder network operated by AT&T, to access unassigned parts of the 4.9 GigaHertz band, currently set aside for local public safety users. The Coalition for Emergency Response and Critical Infrastructure, whose members include T-Mobile and Verizon, led a lawsuit seeking to block the order. The carriers and others have argued the order is essentially a multibillion-dollar windfall for AT&T, which can use FirstNet spectrum as part of its contract.
The coalition argued the 2012 law standing up FirstNet doesn’t allow it to operate outside its current 10 megahertz allocation in the 700 MegaHertz (MHz) band, and that the FCC, which handles commercial spectrum, can’t hand airwaves to a federal entity under the Communications Act. The group said the allocation to FirstNet would even violate the Supreme Court’s major questions doctrine, the idea that federal agencies can’t act on issues of “vast economic and political significance” without explicit direction from Congress.
“The Order simultaneously seeks to strip more than 3,500 state, local, and non-governmental licensees of their incumbent geographic licenses, reorient the 4.9 GHz band to federal control, and – by virtue of FirstNet’s AT&T contract – make the band available for commercial use,” the group wrote. “Congress nowhere clearly authorized this seismic shift.”
The agency would technically be assigning the spectrum to a yet-to-be-selected band manager, which could then enter a sharing agreement with FirstNet, but CERCI argued that was an attempt to work around the FCC’s inability to assign spectrum to a federal entity.
“Taken to its logical conclusion, the idea that licensing restrictions have no bearing on indirect assignments would allow the Commission, for example, to circumvent the statutory prohibition on granting licenses to ‘any foreign government or the representative thereof,’ by relying on a Band Manager to share its license with such entities,” the group wrote.
The order came down under former FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, but had bipartisan support at the agency, with now-Chairman Brendan Carr supporting it at the time.
The National Sheriff's Association, the California State Sheriff's Association, and San Francisco's public transit agency joined CERCI's lawsuit. The city claims the new licensing regime would disrupt consutrucion of a new train constrol system.
The pro-FirstNet side
The Public Safety Spectrum Alliance, the group that had first proposed the idea of opening up 4.9 GHz to FirstNet, also sued the agency after the order. The public safety group doesn’t want it entirely scrapped, but is asking judges to force the FCC to get airwaves in FirstNet’s hands sooner.
As part of the transition, the FCC asked current users to submit data on their existing geographic licenses, which allow spectrum use over a certain area, and request new site-based licenses, which are confined to existing equipment. Incumbents had to submit that data by Monday June 9, and the agency said it would cancel the geographic licenses “potentially immediately” after the deadline.
That was apparently not fast enough for PSSA.
“The Order’s refusal to convert all geographic licenses into site- based licenses will harm the very public safety interests that the Commission seeks to protect through its new licensing framework,” the group wrote. “Because the Commission did not explain its non-action and, in addition, ignored the significant harm to public safety, its failure to convert geographic licenses into site-based licenses is arbitrary and capricious.”
PSSA and AT&T had also asked the FCC to require incumbents to surrender any unused spectrum, a question the agency said it would defer considering until after it had analyzed the data submissions that were due Monday.
The group argued there was “no reason for the Commission to defer the foundational decision of whether to require that identified spectrum be surrendered. Licensees can and should be required to surrender any unused spectrum as soon as it is identified; delay irrationally obstructs accomplishment of the Commission’s stated policy goals.”
A brief from the FCC is due August 4, with replies due in September.
