Recent News

Recent News

The Rules of Spectrum Are Changing As We Speak

July 1, 2025

Spectrum allocation is a very complicated game. It must balance the rights and priorities of many stakeholders, including the DoD and other federal spectrum users, commercial wireless players, new NGSO systems and legacy GSO satellites. And with the FCC potentially altering long-established patterns of spectrum allocation, and a dynamic sharing mechanism scheduled to be demonstrated in November, there’s no telling where the pieces will fall. Who comes out on top: the FCC’s Space Bureau? Wireless? SpaceX? Legacy GEO, which has managed to hold onto its precious bandwidths for decades? For the past several months, the FCC—led by new head of the Space Bureau, Jay Schwarz—has made a concerted effort to streamline and reform satellite licensing processes. It has also announced the intention to open several new sections of bandwidth, including a proposal to open up the lower 37 GHz band, and adopted new sharing rules on the 37 band to encourage wireless innovation. In May, the FCC also proposed a rulemaking that would unleash spectrum across twelve additional bands, including the 12, 42 and 51 GHz bands.

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Test Plans, Results, and Lessons Learned About Open RAN Integration

May 2, 2025

On March 2, 2021, the Department of Defense (DoD), through the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD(R&E)), launched a $7.5 million Center of Excellence in Advanced Quantum Sensing (COE-AQS) at Delaware State University, a Historically Black College and University (HBCU). The COE-AQS will stimulate research and innovation leading to the development of novel quantum sensing technologies and methodologies. The Center was awarded through the OUSD(R&E)’s HBCU and Minority-Serving Institutions (MSI) Research and Education Program and is administered by the Army Research Laboratory.

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Pentagon seeks open-source software for 5G, 6G networks

April 25, 2025

WASHINGTON — As the US military makes big bets on 5G and future 6G networks for everything from streamlining supply lines to controlling combat robots, it doesn’t want to be beholden to the handful of huge tech firms that dominate the market today. So the Pentagon will soon seek bids to develop prototype “open” software — code that any company can freely access and deploy on its devices — in hopes of breaking down barriers to innovation.

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Pentagon’s FutureG Office gearing up for new prototyping effort

April 24, 2025

The National Defense Education Program (NDEP) Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is now on Grants.gov, announcement HQ0034-20-S-FO01. The Department of Defense (DoD) seeks innovative applications on mechanisms to implement Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education, outreach, and/or workforce initiative programs. The Department intends to award multiple grants, subject to the availability of funds. Activities will support the DoD STEM strategic plan and align to the 2018 Federal STEM strategic plan. Suspense for applications is 24 FEB 2020.

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DoD’s FutureG Office Exploring Drone Detection Capabilities

March 21, 2025

The Department of Defense’s (DoD) FutureG Office is exploring how new features of 6G wireless technologies can help to sense drones in a network’s environment, according to Deputy Principal Director Marlan Macklin. At the Elastic Public Sector Summit in Washington, D.C., on March 19, Macklin shared that his unofficial title is “FutureG’s hype man.” His office – which sits within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering – is responsible for the strategic assessment and research and development of FutureG technologies.

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