Relocation Costs an Important Part of Federal Spectrum Studies: NTIA Official
The agency has to identify 200 megahertz of government spectrum for auction by July 2027
WASHINGTON, March 25, 2026 – Determining how much it will cost to relocate federal systems is an important part of the Commerce Department’s studies into which government spectrum bands can be opened up to wireless carriers.
Proceeds from those auctions have to fund relocations, and an auction isn’t legally valid unless it raises 110 percent of those costs, a top spectrum official from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration said Wednesday.
Tricia Paoletta, NTIA’s senior advisor for spectrum, said the process wasn’t as simple as agencies buying upgraded or slightly different gear. She spoke at a webinar hosted by the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy.
“That is not the way the federal systems work, right?” Paoletta said. “They need to be appropriated and Congress needs to pay them out. The manufacturers don’t just churn out some of these more advanced, complicated systems like radars.”
Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed in July, the agency was tasked with identifying 500 megahertz of federal spectrum for auction, with a deadline to find 200 megahertz by July 2027.
The agency is studying the 7.125-7.4 GigaHertz (GHz), which Paoletta said is already underway, plus the 4.4-4.9 GHz, 2.7-2.9 GHz, and 1.675-1.695 GHz bands to meet that goal.
Those involve getting information from incumbent agencies on their potential transition plans and ascertaining what they might cost. That process is done for the 7 GHz spectrum, Paoletta said, and should be done in time for the 4 GHz studies to begin in earnest in the summer or fall of this year.
The agency has already identified 5 megahertz in the 1.675-1.695 GHz band, used for weather forecasting, and is interested in opening up the entire 20 megahertz. The White House said in December it wants a determination that 7.125-7.4 GHz can be used for mobile wireless by the end of the year.
NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth said earlier this month that finalizing agencies’ transition plans, including nailing down which spectrum their new systems would use, was an important part of the agency’s work on the issue.
“You have critical safety-of-life systems that need to get relocated or compressed. In some cases, we don’t have the spectrum specifications of the new systems that the agencies are going to have to purchase,” she said.
WRC-27
Paoletta said it could prove difficult to amass support for U.S. positions on which bands to designate for mobile use at the World Radiocommunication Conference next year. Agenda item 1.7 involves considering the 4.4 GigaHertz (GHz), 7/8 GHz, and 15 GHz band for potential sharing or licensed mobile use, some of which NTIA is currently studying for that purpose.
“The U.S. is not the only country that has a lot of federal systems in some of those bands,” she said. “To get other countries to go along with U.S. positions to identify bands for commercial mobile broadband will be challenging.”
That’s partly because the conference will be hosted in China, which prefers the 6 GHz band for mobile use, spectrum the U.S. has allocated for Wi-Fi. Paoletta said sometimes delegations will defer to a host on an issue of particular importance to the country.
But the conference will deal mostly with satellite issues, she noted. She said trying to ensure foreign market access for American companies like SpaceX, which dominates the low-Earth orbit satellite market, will be a focus of the U.S. delegation.
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