In Setting Priorities, New FCC Chair Happy to Be 'Moving on Trump Time'

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr could not have found a much more sympathetic interviewer than Ajit Pai, Chair of the FCC during the first Trump Administration. That left the conversation between the current and former FCC chairs at this week's CTIA 5G Summit 2025 devoid of fireworks, but it did cast a little light on Chairman Carr's policy priorities. His first goal is one that few voices in Congress publicly object to: securing a renewal of the FCC’s authority to auction wireless spectrum, which Congress let expire in March 2023. He suggested that commercializing the upper reaches of the C-band, the subject of an FCC inquiry opened in February, "would be a really good win for the country if we can get that done." And yet Congress has now spent two years and change punting on opportunities to renew that authority, which Congress first granted to the commission in the analog-cell-phone days of 1993.