In case you missed it – A recent article from Jon Brodkin at Ars Technica underscores why so many public interest groups, consumer advocates, anchor institutions, and rural wireless providers are standing up against CTIA’s aggressive campaign to lock down U.S. spectrum for exclusive use by the Big Three mobile carriers. The article highlights key points raised by Spectrum for the Future – the “everybody but Big Mobile” coalition – which seeks to protect the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) ecosystem that powers competition from lower-cost wireless providers and has created U.S. jobs and driven billions of dollars in investment impacting all 50 states.

“With Spectrum for the Future, the cable industry has allied not just with consumer advocates but also small wireless ISPs and operators of private networks that use spectrum the big mobile companies want for themselves. Another group that is part of the coalition represents schools and libraries that use spectrum to provide local services … Public Knowledge and New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI), another Spectrum for the Future member, are both longtime proponents of shared spectrum. OTI’s Wireless Future Project director, Michael Calabrese, told Ars that Spectrum for the Future is basically the ‘everybody but Big Mobile’ wireless coalition and ‘a very broad but ad hoc coalition’ … CBRS users in the cable industry and beyond want to ensure that CBRS remains available to them and free of high-power mobile signals that would crowd out lower-power operations. They were disturbed by AT&T’s October 2024 proposal to move CBRS to the lower part of the 3 GHz band, which is also used by the Department of Defense, and auction existing CBRS frequencies to 5G wireless companies ‘for licensed, full-power use’ … Keefe John, CEO of a Wisconsin-based wireless home Internet provider called Ethoplex, argued that ‘AT&T and its cabal of telecom giants’ are ‘scheming to rip this resource from the hands of small operators and hand it over to their 5G empire. This is nothing less than a brazen theft of America’s digital future, and we must fight back with unrelenting resolve.’ John is vice chairperson of the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA), which represents small ISPs and is a member of Spectrum for the Future. He wrote that CBRS is a ‘vital spectrum band that has become the lifeblood of rural connectivity’ because small ISPs use it to deliver fixed wireless Internet service to underserved areas.” Read the full story in Ars Technica here.