CTIA Has Lost the Plot on 5G

For Immediate Release 
May 8, 2025
Contact: [email protected] 

Ajit Pai’s recent Wall Street Journal op-ed claims “America Has Lost Its Lead in 5G” and insists the solution is a U.S. spectrum policy designed to insulate CTIA’s three largest members from meaningful competition in mobile.  But Mr. Pai’s arguments are wrong on the facts – and wrong on how to accelerate America’s global wireless leadership.

Wireless traffic is surging… but over Wi-Fi, not 5G.

  • Mr. Pai warns that wireless traffic is expected to triple by 2029.  But he omits that the overwhelming share of this traffic will travel over Wi-Fi, not cellular networks.
  • According to Opensignal, 82-90% of wireless customers’ smartphone data travels over Wi-Fi – not over cellular networks.
  • If Mr. Pai is really concerned with U.S. spectrum policy keeping up with consumer demand, he should join Wi-Fi advocates in calling for additional unlicensed spectrum in the 7 GHz band.  Spectrum policy should be driven by market realities, not lobbying agendas or government favoritism.

Pai claims there’s a spectrum shortage.  His members’ CEOs disagree.

  • Mr. Pai cites a CTIA-funded study to claim “wireless networks will be unable to meet a quarter of peak demand in as little as two years.”  If that’s true, then why are his biggest members’ CEOs telling Wall Street the exact opposite?
    • Verizon’s CEO insists he’s sitting on “a generation of spectrum” – “years and years and years” of spectrum capacity still to deploy.
    • The CEO of Verizon’s consumer group goes even further, insisting they have “almost unlimited spectrum.”
    •  T-Mobile agrees, bragging that it has “only deployed 60% of our mid-band spectrum on 5G,” leaving “lots of spectrum we haven’t put into the fight yet.”

Blasting China for “exporting its spectrum policies” – while asking the U.S. to adopt the same approach – is stunning hypocrisy.

  • China’s spectrum policy goes all-in on exclusive-license frameworks, such as 5G, because they limit spectrum access to just a small handful of regime-aligned telecom companies complicit in Beijing’s censorship regime.  Chinese manufacturers Huawei and ZTE lead the globally market for 5G hardware.
  • America’s global wireless leadership, by contrast, is fueled by spectrum innovations like unlicensed Wi-Fi and CBRS spectrum sharing, whose hardware markets are dominated by American and allied companies.
  • Mr. Pai slams China in one breath for “exporting its spectrum policies” – before pleading with Congress in the next to follow Beijing’s lead.  We can’t beat China by letting the cellular industry’s top lobbyists talk Congress into killing U.S. innovation with the CCP’s top-down approach to spectrum policy.

Lagging 5G availability is The Big Three’s fault, not the FCC’s.

  • Mr. Pai attributes the U.S. losing its lead in 5G availability to the FCC’s lapsed spectrum auction authority.  He’d be more accurate to blame his own members’ failure to build out their networks.
  • The Big Three cellular carriers already hold spectrum licenses in 5G bands covering the entire country.  Where their networks fail to deliver reliable 5G service, that’s because they haven’t made the investments needed to build out across rural America.  It’s not a lack of spectrum – it’s The Big Three’s deliberate refusal to invest beyond big cities.
  • If The Big Three aren’t delivering rural 5G availability with the spectrum licenses they already control in those areas, why would anyone believe they’d do better if gifted even more exclusive spectrum?

CTIA’s spectrum wish-list would cost the Treasury hundreds of billions.

  • Mr. Pai fancifully suggests that auctioning 600 MHz of full-power, exclusive spectrum could raise $200 billion.  That’s twice what even the proposal’s own Senate sponsor suggests it could raise.
  • In fact, Pai’s absurd claim presumes that this auction of 600 MHz could approach the combined total ($233 billion) that has been raised by every prior spectrum auction (totaling nearly 6 GHz of bandwidth) in U.S. history combined. 
  • Moreover, Mr. Pai’s math doesn’t add up.  He completely ignores the immense cost to taxpayers to relocate incumbent military and intelligence systems out of the bands CTIA covets for its own use.  The Navy alone has suggested that clearing just the lower 3 GHz band – high up on Mr. Pai’s wish list – would cost taxpayers at least $250 billion and imperil President Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense system.

Pai ignores CTIA members’ assault on American wireless innovation.

  • Mr. Pai’s op-ed praises his own tenure leading the FCC, stating:  “During the first Trump administration, the U.S. was determined to lead the world in wireless innovation—and by 2021 it did.”  This Trump-Pai record of success from 2017-2021 includes launching CBRS – an American innovation that delivers new 5G network capacity and mobile competition without displacing critical military systems operating in the same band.
    • Then-Chairman Pai oversaw the auction of CBRS airwave licenses and touted its success for 5G, acknowledging the two are not mutually exclusive: “This auction [CBRS] has been a key part of our 5G FAST Plan and our ongoing push to make more mid-band spectrum available for 5G.” In fact, CTIA’s biggest members – Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T – are all end-users of CBRS shared spectrum.
  • But AT&T and CTIA are now pushing a proposal to effectively end CBRS – cancelling thousands of licenses already purchased at auction and powering down more than 400,000 CBRS base stations already deployed and serving millions of customers.
  • Even as he praises his own record as FCC Chair, Pai’s op-ed is silent on AT&T’s self-serving plan to reverse one of his biggest successes, take spectrum away from American innovators, and cripple U.S. competitiveness.