NTIA Administrator Roth on Strategy for Federal Spectrum Reallocation

WASHINGTON, Sept. 18, 2025 — The National Telecommunications and Information Administration's recent identification of five megahertz from weather satellite frequencies this week may mark the beginning of a hunt for federal spectrum reallocation.

The announcement represents the first step toward meeting Congress' mandate to identify 500 megahertz of federal spectrum for commercial auction under the budget reconciliation measure. The broader 800-megahertz pipeline includes an additional 300 megahertz from non-federal spectrum under Federal Communications Commission jurisdiction.

Recently-confirmed NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth characterized the effort as balancing economic development and national security imperatives. Federal agencies must evaluate whether to share frequency or reallocate them while maintaining mission capabilities.

Echoing a viewpoint frequently voiced by her former boss, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Roth emphasized that military effectiveness increasingly relies on commercial spectrum innovation.

She was speaking Friday during a fireside chat with University of Pennsylvania Professor Christopher Yoo at TPRC, the telecommunications and technology policy research conference here.

NTIA has identified several additional spectrum bands for evaluation beyond the initial meteorological frequencies, she said. These include portions of the 7.1-7.4 GigaHertz (GHz), 2.7-2.9 GHz, and 4.4-4.9 GHz bands as places the agency hopes to impress as potential targets toward the 500-megahertz target. 

Changing attitudes in military and commercial worlds

Roth described what she called a “sea change” in interagency cooperation on spectrum issues. 

“I’m very optimistic that we’re on the right track. We’re rowing in the same direction and we’re going to have successful results,” she said. 

The new era contrasted sharply with discussion at TPRC last year, when Congress and the Biden administration remained mired in the lack of spectrum auction authority for the FCC. The budget reconciliation measure championed by Trump and passed by Republicans – no Democrats supported it – reinstated FCC auction authority and called for the 800 megahertz “pipeline.”

The most fundamental change this year, of course, is passage of the budget bill. Roth said the measure took the “same kind of tried, tested, and true approach [by] setting out clear and specific targets for the FCC to auction."

Addressing the technical challenges of spectrum reallocation, Roth emphasized the inseparable connection between equipment modernization and spectrum availability. She noted that freeing up frequencies requires concurrent system upgrades, making modernization funding critical to successful reallocation efforts.

Other in panel discussion views

In a subsequent panel discussion following Roth's remarks, Johanna Thomas, senior counsel for the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Democratic staff, emphasized the generally bipartisan nature of spectrum policy, noting that "the committee generally has always had a good relationship, a good bipartisan relationship" on spectrum issues.

The current spectrum identification process should focus on finding "spectrum that's available in large chunks of megahertz, contiguous spectrum, advanced spectrum that is locally harmonized," said Umair Javed, senior vice president and general counsel of CTIA, The Wireless Association. He highlighted priority bands aligned with the earlier-mentioned bands.

Javed also highlighted past successes, citing the AWS (advanced wireless services) spectrum auctions that raised $45 billion, while costing only $5 billion in federal relocation expenses. 

Yet traditional economic incentives "don't seem to work anymore," he worried, and said that some federal agencies now exhibit "almost adherence to this growing almost ideology of not [giving up] one megahertz."

Joshua Weaver, director of spectrum initiatives and analysis at the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, expressed concern about study delays and interagency coordination challenges. Technical assessments can take extended periods to complete, with some studies requiring a full year to launch due to funding and coordination complexities.

Yet he also voiced some optimism: "The commoditization of software-defined radio, the explosion of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and edge computing [are] really opening up the opportunity space," he said.

Congressional oversight will continue monitoring agency progress, though participants acknowledged that missed deadlines carry no formal penalties beyond political accountability pressure from lawmakers.

When pressed about enforcement mechanisms if federal agencies fail to meet the statutory deadlines for freeing up spectrum, the panel acknowledged there are no penalties for noncompliance. 

"There's no one going to spectrum jail if those studies don't get done," House committee staffer Thomas said in response to a question about consequences for missing the targets for identifying spectrum for auction.

Instead, Thomas emphasized that Congress would need to exercise its oversight role to "hold feet to the fire" among the spectrum policy players.