For Immediate Release
January 13, 2026
Contact: [email protected]
Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs) across the country are sounding the alarm on the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) proposal to relocate current users from the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) band and designate it as a high-power band. Dubbed the “innovation band,” CBRS enables WISPs to provide broadband to rural communities across the country. If CBRS were to become a high-power band, families and businesses would lose their connectivity, undermining economic growth and opportunity in those rural communities.
The following are excerpts from recent WISP letters to the FCC on proposed changes to CBRS:
“Neither relocation or increased power levels are acceptable to existing CBRS operations. Power levels currently authorized for CBRS work just fine, as they are already slightly higher power than 5 or 6Ghz channels, so they perform better in rural areas and maintain reliable broadband services due to their lower frequency compared to 5 and 6Ghz, and better coverage in near line of site or longer distance installations.”
Joel A. Brick, Technical Consultant, and Chad Benson, Owner, Interlakes Wireless, December 15, 2025
“Relocating CBRS operations would directly harm our company and the customers we serve, as it would significantly disrupt our ability to provide consistent, high-speed broadband in rural and underserved areas.”
Robert W. Pensworth, CEO, CresComm WiFi, December 16, 2025
“Our wireless internet supports critical infrastructure, homes, and businesses in rural areas which depend on reliable service connections. As a result, our network is carefully engineered for coverage and frequency management. Increasing power would cause interference, service disruptions, and potentially costly equipment replacements.”
Mike Kennedy, President & CEO, Intermax Networks, December 15, 2025
“Any combination of relocating CBRS to another band, increasing maximum power levels, or reducing available GAA spectrum would cause direct financial harm to our business and our customers. There is no viable substitute spectrum that offers comparable propagation characteristics, sharing rules, and equipment availability at similar cost.”
John Lyons, Owner, Acrospire Networks LLC, December 15, 2025
“CBRS is a success story: It delivers affordable broadband, fosters innovation, and supports rural America. Altering its core framework would disconnect millions, waste billions, derail BEAD timelines and reverse competitive gains. Accordingly, we respectfully ask the FCC to protect CBRS as it stands.”
Vantage Point Solutions, December 15, 2025
“The proposed changes to existing CBRS regulations present the potential for real harm to my business. We have deployed the CBRS service with equipment compliant with current regulatory requirements. Substantial changes to the power levels or other technical rules will likely have a very serious impact on us and the communities we serve.”
William Geibel Jr., President, Wired or Wireless, Inc., December 10, 2025
“Relocating CBRS operations would require redesign and replacement of a very large portion of our fixed-wireless infrastructure, including PAL and GAA sectors, customer premise equipment, and backhaul planning. This would mean extensive and repeated truck rolls across a 12,000+ square-mile rural service area, new hardware purchases, and network re-optimization, all while trying to maintain continuous service for thousands of households and businesses that depend on us for work, education, telehealth, precision agriculture, and public safety.”
Craig Stein, CEO, Cal.net, Inc., December 15, 2025
“For rural communities, CBRS is not an experimental technology or a secondary option; it is essential infrastructure. Any major disruption to the CBRS framework risks setting rural broadband deployment backward by years, leaving homes, farms, small businesses, schools, and healthcare providers without dependable connectivity.”
Zach Eggers, Partner, The Greater Eastern Oregon Network, December 15, 2025
“Implementing the CBRS platform was a groundbreaking development by the FCC that empowered small WISP operations like mine to provide customizable connections in difficult to serve areas. I join a cohort of US Senators in encouraging the FCC to build on the success of the CBRS system by maintaining the rules that currently protect this spectrum from interference and encroachment and by looking for other opportunities to encourage the development and expansion of dynamic spectrum sharing systems.”
Timothy Neipp, CEO, Cosner-Neipp Corporation, December 12, 2025