A few years ago, the wireless industry promised Americans that 5G would change everything. Doctors would perform remote surgeries. Driverless cars would eliminate traffic accidents. Smart cities would run on wireless networks connecting everything from traffic lights to refrigerators.
Congress heard similarly sweeping claims: “winning the race to 5G” had to be prioritized over all other spectrum policies and would unleash up to $1.7 trillion in economic growth and create millions of new jobs.
Fast forward to today. Most Americans carry a 5G-capable phone in their pocket, yet most would struggle to tell you how it’s changed their lives. Bruno Zerbib, the chief technology officer of European carrier Orange, recently acknowledged the industry’s tendency to over-promise, noting that "connected cars did not happen" and "remote surgery did not happen."
Now the wireless industry is back with a new pitch. This time, the magic ingredient is AI. Carriers are arguing that the coming era of AI can only be powered by 6G and will require vast new allocations of spectrum – some of the nation's most valuable shared airwaves.
What does that mean for you? It means decisions being made in Washington today could shape how much you pay for wireless service – and even how strong your home Wi-Fi is.
Before Washington acts, it’s worth asking a simple question: what did we actually get from the last round of promises?
The new pitch sounds logical: AI is transforming everything and requires connectivity. Therefore, wireless carriers need more spectrum for 6G to power the AI future. That reasoning, however, collapses when you look at how AI works.
While unlicensed spectrum and Wi-Fi will be important to enabling AI, the technologies driving the AI boom – large language models, cloud computing – run inside massive data centers connected by ultra-fast fiber networks, not cell towers. Training modern AI systems requires clusters of processors exchanging enormous volumes of data at extremely high speeds far beyond what wireless networks alone can deliver. Even the AI tools consumers use every day involve small requests from your phone traveling to those data centers and back.
Even industry leaders acknowledge this reality. As AT&T’s COO Jeff McElfresh recently noted at the 2026 Morgan Stanley Tech, Media & Telecom Conference, AI-driven applications like robotics and autonomous systems require “dense, very robust terrestrial networks on the ground” to handle their massive data demands and not next-generation mobile networks alone. At the same time, AT&T’s CTO Yigal Elbaz, has expressed skepticism about how much AI computing will take place at edge of their networks, saying “the carrier is not preparing its network to be "AI-ready" and "AI-native" or that it isn't exploring AI edge capabilities.”
In other words, your phone connects you to AI, but it’s not where AI actually runs.
This matters because we've seen the playbook before. The previous, sweeping 5G economic promises – trillions in added GDP, millions of new jobs – were used to shape real policy decisions: spectrum auctions, infrastructure investments, regulatory priorities worth billions of dollars. Yet rigorous analyses comparing counties with varying levels of 5G deployment have found no measurable impact on employment, wages, business growth, personal income, or GDP.
The technology improved incrementally and the wireless industry should certainly be credited for investing in modern infrastructure, but there’s a significant difference between "useful infrastructure" and "life-changing transformation."
When policymakers confuse the two, consumers can end up paying the price.
Spectrum is a finite public resource, and how it gets allocated has direct consequences for everyday Americans. The same airwaves support the Wi-Fi networks that power homes and schools, private wireless systems used in factories and hospitals, and innovative shared-spectrum models that allow multiple technologies to coexist. Once spectrum is locked into exclusive carrier licenses, that can mean fewer choices and higher prices over time.
Here's what makes the carriers' current push especially worth scrutinizing: they already hold enormous amounts of spectrum. By some executives' own admissions to investors, they have "almost unlimited" capacity. Samsung Networks CEO Woojune Kim recently told reporters at MWC Barcelona "5G already solved that (spectrum issue) because when we did 5G we overdid it.” Rural Americans were promised 5G coverage years ago and are still waiting – not for more spectrum, but for carriers to actually deploy the resources they already control. Furthermore, the growing shift towards direct-to-device services, particularly by Verizon and AT&T, suggests that these carriers have no intention of continuing to build their rural infrastructure.
Meanwhile, experts increasingly believe the real path to next-generation wireless capacity runs through smarter use of existing spectrum, such as dynamic sharing models, rather than simply handing over more airwaves. The United States already leads the world in these innovative approaches, and we should continue to do so.
Before policymakers make another round of spectrum decisions, they owe the consumers something simple: proof that the last promises delivered meaningful benefits. The fact is that the grandiose promises of the 5G era didn’t translate into real-world results.
Consumers shouldn’t have to pay—through higher prices or fewer choices—for a second round of promises that look a lot like the first.
Gerard Scimeca is an attorney and serves as chairman and co-founder of Consumer Action for a Strong Economy, a free-market consumer advocacy organization.
