EXCLUSIVE: FCC Commissioner Says Spectrum Auction Could Be ‘Win-Win’

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Nathan Simington said the Pentagon’s decades-old grip on valuable radio spectrum may need to loosen in order to allow wireless networks to build more 5G and 6G infrastructure, in an interview with the 🏢Daily Caller News Foundation.

The commissioner outlined how military spectrum holdings — some dating back to the Truman administration — could be commercialized through a “win-win” auction model that he said has successfully relocated federal agencies before. Simington said President Donald Trump’s push to commercialize 600 megahertz of spectrum in his “big, beautiful bill” represents a major policy shift toward prioritizing America’s wireless infrastructure.

“A lot of bands have been held since the Truman administration,” Simington told the DCNF. “That comes from an era when the only ways to separate different applications was to have them on slightly different frequencies or in different geographic areas. Now increasingly we can virtually separate them within software.”

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The debate centers on the coveted mid-band 3.1 to 3.45 spectrum — prime real estate for cellular providers that the Pentagon has argued is essential for national security. Simington said modern