Incoming FCC Chair Brendan Carr to Radically Shift Agency’s Approach to Broadband and Unlicensed Spectrum

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has selected Federal Communications Commission (FCC) veteran Brendan Carr as the next Chair of the agency, replacing the outgoing Jessica Rosenworcel. Carr has been an open critic of Rosenworcel’s signature achievements, testifying in July 2024 that the US$42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Development (BEAD) program for upgrading the U.S. broadband infrastructure was “going off the rails,” and in October 2024, he accused the administration of laying the groundwork for price controls on Internet Service Providers (ISPs) via the implementation of Title II controls on the Internet. Given the stark contrast between Carr’s views and those of his soon to be predecessor, we can expect radical changes within the FCC once Carr takes the reins of the agency. This ABI Insight analyzes Carr’s convictions to offer foresight into what he has in store for the FCC, and to provide guidance for how the industry should prepare for the new era.

In contrast to the appointments U.S. President-elect Trump has made to lead other Federal agencies, many of which are departmental outsiders, Carr has over a decade of service within the FCC. After gaining early career experience as a telecommunications lawyer in the private sector, Carr joined the FCC as a staffer in 2012, and progressed to the role of legal advisor to then-Commissioner Ajit Pai between February 2014 and January 2017. Following Pai’s appointment to FCC Chair in January 2017, Carr briefly served as the FCC’s General Counsel, before being confirmed as an FCC Commissioner himself in August 2017. He retained this position throughout the remainder of Trump’s first term and through the entirety of Biden’s administration, receiving renomination from Biden in May 2023. Having a background from within the FCC, as opposed to outside it, will no doubt be of great benefit to Carr, as he will have had the time to develop a deep understanding of the inner workings of the agency and to foster important contacts both inside the agency and within the broader telecommunications industry. Moreover, his actions and statements over the last 12 years provide us with a good insight into what an FCC under Carr would look like.  

Carr has consistently criticized what he considered to be the excessive spending and ballooning headcount of the FCC, and so it is safe to assume that Carr will strive for a leaner, more efficient FCC. A reining in of the FCC’s budget lowers the likelihood that additional financial resources will be allocated for future broadband projects, and may potentially even prevent the distribution of previously earmarked funds. Given Carr’s public denouncement of the BEAD program (read this ABI Insight for more background on the initiative), which he testified was “going off the rails” and would undoubtably lead to “wasteful overbuilding,” yet to be assigned portions of the US$42.45 billion total may well be the first on the chopping block. Carr has also expressed his desire to see greater oversight into the outcomes of how government money is spent. For foresight into how this strengthened spending scrutiny might work in practice under Carr, we can refer to his recent dissenting statements while serving as FCC Commissioner. For example, Carr protested the lack of accountability for the US$60 million allocated by the FCC for Wi-Fi on buses, arguing that studies should have been conducted to measure the efficacy of the initiative in terms of the number of students connected or improvements in academic outcomes.

Another constant for Carr has been his steadfast resistance to further regulation on the industry. There are numerous proposed and recently enacted FCC directives that Carr is likely to attempt to prevent or reverse. These include the Title II controls (which Carr perceived as the precursor to price controls on ISPs), and Rosenworcel’s proposal to prohibit landlords from entering into “bulk billing” agreements with ISPs (these require all residents within the property to purchase broadband services from one specific broadband provider). While cutting red tape will be a contentious issue, many in the industry would welcome the change in approach. This would be the case if Carr prevented Rosenworcel’s proposed bulk billing ban. While she believed it would reduce subscription costs by increasing market competition, a coalition of bodies representing the Multi-Dwelling Unit (MDU) industry jointly protested the proposal, arguing that it would actually result in higher subscription fees because landlords would be unable to negotiate favorable prices by offering an ISP a captive market of residents.

Carr has also been a strong proponent of alternative forms of broadband access beyond fiber. Notably, in his dissenting statement against the BEAD program for upgrading U.S. broadband access, Carr deplored what he saw as the Biden administration’s approach of using state funds to “pick technological winners and losers,” to the advantage of fiber and the disadvantage of alternatives such as 5G fixed wireless and Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. In the case of the latter, one of Rosenworcel’s main concerns regarding the emerging technology appeared to be her concern over what she saw as Starlink’s monopoly over satellite Internet traffic. In contrast, Carr has been vocal in his support for the company and its owner, Elon Musk. Carr’s indifference to any monopoly concerns means that we may see FCC subsidize Starlink for expanding satellite broadband connectivity, similar to how the FCC awarded US$855 million to the company in 2020 (a decision later reversed) to provide high-speed Internet to 642,025 locations across 35 states.

A further area of differentiation is likely to be spectrum policy. Carr has made no secret of his disapproval of the Biden administration’s approach to spectrum policy, claiming that during Rosenworcel’s tenure, the FCC lacked a coherent spectrum plan and acted too slowly, putting American leadership in Wi-Fi technologies at risk due to delays in authorizing Very Low Power (VLP) transmissions in the 6 Gigahertz (GHz) band. Upon assuming the agency, Chairman Carr will likely act quickly to reassess spectrum policy with the goal of accelerating allocations. Given that 6 GHz has yet to reach full utilization, there are unlikely to be further unlicensed spectrum allocations over the next 4 years. On the contrary, and there remains the possibility (albeit a low one) that Carr might reassign unlicensed frequencies for licensed International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT) use to help spur 5G/6G in the United States. Carr raised this prospect in his previous spectrum plan, which suggested the potential reassignment of U-NII-2C (5470 – 5725 Megahertz (MHz)) from unlicensed toward licensed, on the assumption that the 255 MHz of frequency remains broadly underutilized by Wi-Fi today.

• Greater Support for 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA): Over the past decade, Carr has been a central player driving the FCC’s agenda on 5G infrastructure, a role that led some to label him the “FCC’s 5G crusader.” This, combined with his recent criticism that the BEAD program neglected the role that 5G FWA can play in closing the connectivity divide in the United States, suggests that Carr’s FCC will offer greater support for 5G FWA.
• Increased Scrutiny on Chinese Suppliers: Over the past several years, Carr has repeatedly advocated for heightened restrictions on Chinese tech companies operating or selling into the United States. His concerns will likely translate into probes and potentially bans on infrastructure and platform providers once he becomes Chair of the FCC. Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) vendors with ties to Mainland China, which still sell large quantities into the U.S. market, such as TP-Link or CIG, will be the most threatened by this.
• Reduced Government Subsidies: Carr’s aversion to picking winners and losers might actually be to the detriment of U.S. manufacturers, because they were the ones being picked by the “Buy American” requirements of recent government initiatives such as the BEAD program. Should Carr scale back funding programs that mandate sourcing from U.S. suppliers, then there will be fewer incentives for ISPs to select them for their network. Cost-efficient Taiwanese and South Korean vendors may benefit the most from this.
• Lower Regulatory Burden for ISPs: Carr aspires to reduce government involvement in ISP business affairs, which he believes will help spur market competition and stimulate innovation. This new environment will likely make business smoother for ISPs, as they will have to deal with less onerous red tape and will face less unpredictability. Yet, while this move will undoubtedly be well received by ISPs, it reduces the scope for government action on some of the most pressing issues facing U.S. Internet subscribers, such as lack of consumer choice, high subscription costs, or underinvestment in outdated networks.