The U.S. Department of Commerce and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced today that the 2.7 GHz had cleared a key technical review and is now available for full-power commercial licensed use.
Last year, Congress told NTIA to identify 500 MHz of federal spectrum for commercial use within five years. In December, President Trump directed NTIA to complete its study of the 7.125–7.4 GHz band within a year. He also directed NTIA to immediately begin studying whether portions of the 2.69–2.9 GHz band (“2.7 GHz”) and the 4.4–4.94 GHz band could be reallocated from federal use to full-power commercial licensed use.
The 2.7 GHz band offers an excellent combination of coverage and capacity. It is capable of covering whole neighborhoods, including indoors, and also supports the large, contiguous channels needed for next-generation, high-throughput applications, according to NTIA.
“President Trump delivered a once-in-a-generation opportunity to modernize federal systems, improve spectrum efficiency, and unlock high-power commercial access to advance American wireless innovation,” Arielle Roth, assistant secretary for communications and information and NTIA administrator, said in a prepared statement about the 2.7 GHz band.
“NTIA is executing on that mandate with urgency. This milestone brings us one step closer to ensuring the American people realize the full benefit of this spectrum as quickly as possible.”
Additional spectrum is needed for 6G, according to a Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA) report from November 2025. GSMA’s Vision 2040 report suggested what would happen if the need for more midband is not addressed. It predicted that, if midband doesn’t grow, more than half the urban population will be capacity-constrained by 2030.
The move to open the 2.7 GHz band for commercial use is intended to address this need.
