Wireless Telecommunications

With the pausing of billions of dollars in U.S. military aid and of intelligence sharing with Ukraine, there are fears in the country that billionaire Elon Musk’s vital Starlink internet service could also be cut. Thousands of Starlink terminals are working on Ukraine’s battlefields.

In November 2024, Nguyen Thi Que’s mobile phone suddenly stopped working as telecom companies in Vietnam permanently shut down the 2G network. “I thought of buying a new phone, but I don’t have money,” said the 73-year-old, who sells iced tea at a bus stop in Hanoi. Vietnam’s plan was simple: Offer free 4G feature phones to help low-income 2G consumers adapt to the change.

On March 4, the House of Representatives' Commerce Committee, chaired by Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY), held a full committee markup to consider twelve bills in total––the committee's first legislative markup of the 119th Congress. "This Committee has a rich, bipartisan history, which we will continue in that spirit with the bills we are considering today," said Rep Guthrie in his opening remarks.

US cable operators have been struggling to regain their footing in broadband as they try to grow subscribers again in the midst of an array of pressures including fiber and fixed wireless access competition, a slow housing move market and the impact of the end of the Affordable Connectivity Program. Several US cable operators are responding by leaning into convergence.

The House Communications and Technology Subcommittee met on March 5 in a hearing titled "Fixing Biden’s Broadband Blunder." Republicans on the panel seem most focused on concerns raised by states and broadband providers about the National Telecommunications and Information Administration's (NTIA) Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program. Established by Congress in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the BEAD Program is distributing $42.45 billion to states to provide grants for last-mile deployment in unserved and underserved areas.

Rep Tom Kean (R-NJ-7) introduced the Promoting United States Wireless Leadership Act of 2025, a bipartisan bill that would bolster American technological leadership by bringing key trusted leaders together and encourage U.S. participation in global standards-setting for 5G networks and for future generations of wireless communications networks. This bill would direct the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to:  

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the federal government would take steps to hire more air-traffic controllers and spend billions of dollars to upgrade the nation’s aviation system. Duffy said he would ask Congress to fund upgrades to the technology underpinning the nation’s air-traffic control system, pointing to its reliance on decades-old copper wire, floppy disks and phone jacks. Duffy said he hadn’t made a decision about whether to use the Starlink satellite communications system to improve air-traffic-control technology.

Small wireless carriers are asking the Federal Communications Commission to delay the implementation of the 5G Fund for Rural America. This new funding mechanism was approved by the FCC in August 2024 and is aimed at improving rural 5G coverage.

When President Joe Biden put $42 billion behind making high-speed internet accessible across the US, he committed to doing it the old-fashioned way—with miles upon miles of fiber-optic lines. That frustrated Elon Musk, who said his Starlink satellite-internet business could get rural areas online faster, at lower cost.

If everything goes their way, U.S. wireless carriers could see somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 MHz of spectrum flowing into the spectrum pipeline over the next four years. Based on previous transactions, that spectrum could be worth a cool $160 billion.