Some Lawmakers Wary Of NextNav Proposal
Other witnesses promoted GPS backups using alternative satellites options or TV broadcasting infrastructure.
WASHINGTON, June 4, 2026 – Some lawmakers appeared wary of NextNav’s proposed terrestrial GPS complement at a House hearing on Thursday.
At least eight said they were concerned about the company’s ambition to deploy a terrestrial GPS backup and 5G broadband network in the lower 900 MegaHertz (MHz) band. Fellow users of the band have strongly opposed the plan, arguing interference from the higher power equipment would render their devices unusable.
“I think the sheer amount of opposition that you have is alarming. We walk into this hearing and there’s a ton of organizations, everything from utilities to small companies, that say this is too much,” Rep. Russel Fry, R-S.C., said to NextNav CEO Mariam Sorond. “So why is it that carving this lane out would be appropriate, and these other companies, these other utilities, are wrong?”
Sorond maintained that NextNav’s plan would not result in undue interference with RFID chips, tolling operators, and other systems that use the band the company is looking to reorganize.
She noted the Federal Communications Commission has already granted the company authority to test its proposal in Santa Clara County, Calif., and showed lawmakers a map of the area.
“Many of the operators you just mentioned, retailers, airports, they all exist here,” she told Rep. Craig Goldman, R-Texas, who also expressed concern. “They’re all within this map. And not a single one has reported interference.”
The House Communications and Technology Subcommittee convened the hearing to get background on the need for GPS backups and complements and the state of position, navigation, and timing (PNT) technology generally.
The other lawmakers who said they were concerned about interference from NextNav’s proposal were Democrats. Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., asked the other witnesses to each say whether they supported NextNav’s plan, which they did not.
She also asked Sorond how the proposed system would work in rural areas with poor or no cell coverage, given its dependence on 5G infrastructure. Sorond responded that more than 96 percent of the U.S. population would be covered, and that a “system of systems” involving multiple solutions was necessary to supplement and backup GPS.
Harold Feld, Public Knowledge’s senior vice president, urged lawmakers against the idea, as did Consumer Technology Association CEO J. David Grossman whose organizations have opposed the plan before the FCC.
“This is a landgrab, and we must prevent it,” Feld said. “They want vastly increased spectrum rights that would be valued at billions of dollars if they had to buy them at auction. They do not offer any public interest obligations in exchange.”
The company already offers location services for emergency responders that precisely identify a 911 caller’s location in a building, something GPS can’t do as reliably.
While he didn’t explicitly say he supported NextNav, one lawmaker, Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., took a position that the company agrees with. Guthrie, the chairman of the full House Energy and Commerce Committee, repeatedly said his committee and the FCC should handle spectrum policy rather than appropriators and asked witnesses to affirm that view, which they did.
It was clearly a reference to the House Appropriations Committee inserting language in an FCC funding bill that would prevent the agency from pursuing NextNav’s proposal. The bill cleared the committee in April but hasn’t been taken up by the full House, and would fund the agency through fiscal year 2027.
A coalition of 60 groups and companies wrote to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr Wednesday again urging against the company’s proposal. A retail industry group wrote to Guthrie with similar concerns ahead of the hearing.
The Security Industry Association, a NextNav opponent, expects the FCC to take more input on the NextNav/PNT issue sometime this summer. The agency has already fielded comments on the company's proposal and GPS backups generally.
Other solutions
Other witnesses promoted their own GPS complement solutions during the hearing.
Lisa Dyer, executive director of the GPS Innovation Alliance, a PNT industry group, said the threat of a GPS outage was overstated. The system has never gone fully dark since it came online in 1995, she noted, but it is susceptible to spoofing and jamming, especially common in warzones.
Witnesses and lawmakers generally agreed that because so many systems rely on GPS, including banking, aviation, and consumer devices, even a short-term outage could be severely disruptive.
Dyer pointed to three satellite-based GPS complements. Iridium already provides PNT services with its low-Earth orbit satellites, she noted.
TrustPoint, a GPSIA member, is aiming to use C-band spectrum for PNT operations rather than L-band and expects to offer service in 2027, she said. In written testimony, she also urged Congress to push the FCC to approve a request from Xona, a company looking to broadcast a new L-band signal alongside GPS to add redundancy without extra gear.
Sam Matheny, head of National Association of Broadcasters’ Merkhet Solutions, pitched the company’s terrestrial proposal. That involves using broadcast signals on the new ATSC 3.0 standard to provide timing and position information.
The service, called the Broadcast Positions System (BPS), is online in three markets, he said, and could be online in the 80 markets with ATSC 3.0 by the end of the year. It would roll out to nationwide coverage when the ATSC 3.0 transition is complete, a process still being worked out at the FCC.
BPS’s first goal is to provide timing data to critical infrastructure companies, Matheny said, but Merkhet would like to provide location triangulation services as well. He said with more development it could reach high-location accuracy.
Merkhet has a grant from the Department of Transportation to conduct a BPS trial with Dominion, a major energy company that is being acquired by NextEra Energy.
“Anyone familiar with the FCC’s ATSC docket will see that the proposed ATSC transition has raised many complicated and contentious questions,” Feld said. “We must not short-circuit the careful consideration needed here in order to rush BPS to market.”
