NextNav sparks policy debate with GPS backup proposal
Connor D. Wolf
The federal review of a proposed backup geolocation network has drawn intense scrutiny as stakeholders, including the trucking industry, battle over its potential downsides.
The Federal Communications Commission is considering a rulemaking petition from technology firm NextNav, which has requested that a portion of the wireless spectrum band be reconfigured to enable a 5G terrestrial positioning, navigation and timing network that would complement GPS technology.
The proposal, which moved to an interagency review in March 2026, has drawn increased attention this year from groups such as American Trucking Associations.
“ATA, partners throughout the trucking industry and a broad coalition of stakeholders including retailers and aviation, all strongly oppose this petition because of the important use cases of the spectrum for existing supply chain services,” ATA President Chris Spear said while testifying at a June 9 hearing before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Surface Transportation, Freight, Pipelines, and Safety.
The same band of spectrum currently supports asset and shipment tracking, transponders and other systems that rely on radio-frequency identification.
“All modes of freight transportation have made significant investments in RFID-based solutions,” Spear said. “The lower 900 MHz band is used in trackers for supply chain security to thwart cargo theft, track equipment and inventory, bypass tolls and bypass weigh stations.”
Spear stressed that ATA recognizes the importance of strengthening PNT capabilities but warned that any effort to develop a terrestrial GPS backup system must be carefully balanced against the needs of existing spectrum users.
The NextNav petition has generated a range of views across a variety of industries and interests.
“Everybody has an ox to gore here,” said Avi Rosenthal, the chairman of the opposition group Z-Wave Alliance. “You can make an argument that the retail and the trucking industries are going to be more affected because they have more physical devices out there.”
Rosenthal is among the opponents who still believe there needs to be a secondary PNT network. He views it as a critical infrastructure issue. But he also noted there are about a dozen other proposals that don’t require a lower-band takeover.
“GPS underpins modern infrastructure, and relying on one system leaves America vulnerable,” Renee Gregory, vice president of regulatory affairs at NextNav, told Transport Topics. “We’re on a mission to help close that gap with a ground-based 5G-powered 3D PNT solution that can complement and back up GPS with no cost to taxpayers.”
The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee held a hearing examining PNT capabilities in June. Lawmakers questioned stakeholders on the issue, especially its potential for network interference. NextNav said its proposal leverages licensed spectrum and the existing 5G ecosystem to provide that extra layer of protection in a way that still allows unlicensed users.
A spectrum of views
“Most of the opponents in the FCC docket actually agree with the need for backup GPS and a reliable [PNT] network,” said Lauren Bresette, associate director of government relations at the Security Industry Association. “But their specific proposal would cause more harm than solutions, and there’s also debate about whether it would be effective.”
Bresette added that this lower range is valuable to the security industry due to a rule that requires licensees to prove that they’re not causing harmful interference. She warned the change would disrupt devices with long-range frequency connections like tolling, port security and RFID tags.
“Precision GPS applications such as agriculture and construction rely on terrestrial radio links that are transmitted in the lower 900 MHz band,” said Lisa Dyer, executive director of the GPS Innovation Alliance. “Any effort to broadcast high-power 5G signals in the lower 900 MHz band as indicated in NextNav’s application will overwhelm those radio links.”
Dyer warned that it could jeopardize economically important precision PNT applications. She also urged federal regulators not to put their thumb on the scale for a particular solution, since market-driven innovations have already been shown to work for similar issues.
“Part of their proposal is restructuring some of their existing licenses in the band in order to do high-power operations, and then also removing that requirement that they prove they don’t cause harmful interference for unlicensed devices,” Bresette said. “Things like alarm systems.”
An economic report by The Brattle Group, commissioned by NextNav, estimated that a one-day global GPS outage would cost the U.S. economy $1.6 billion and indicated that NextNav’s terrestrial backup would act as a $10.8 billion insurance policy against satellite outages.
“The need for greater resiliency in lifesaving and mission-critical terrestrial PNT technologies has been acknowledged by four presidential administrations,” said Paroma Sanyal, telecommunications industry expert at Brattle. “Yet few proposals have provided a clear path to a robust solution without substantial government intervention or taxpayer funding.”
Beyond the NextNav proposal, the government is also exploring the backup GPS issue more generally and could move on to other proposals, said Bresette of the Security Industry Association.
“The Department of Transportation is testing nine alternative options,” Bresette said. “None of them, other than the NextNav proposal, would even touch the lower 900 MHz.”
Rosenthal suspects the amount of pushback against the NextNav proposal led to the delayed review process, with the typical three- to four-month process stretching more than a year.
