For U.S. Telcos, Spectrum Is King
sebastianbarros.substack.com
July 4, 2026, 1:30 p.m.
Yup, you can be a trillion-dollar company; you can have the cheapest plans on the market; you can hire the best engineers in the world. But if you don’t have enough spectrum, everything is an uphill battle. Spectrum is the land your network is built on. Everything else, such as radios, software, and marketing, is what you build on top of it, and no amount of construction skill compensates for a small lot.The United States is about to prove this twice. Once with fresh performance data that shows exactly how spectrum, not equipment, decides who wins today. And once with what’s coming with the mother of all spectrum auctions, 160 MHz of prime mid-band, the rules for which the FCC votes on July 22, 2026, which could redraw the American wireless map for the next decade.