https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191119/07091843408/ajit-pai-does-good-thing-as-he-pushes-public-c-band-auction.shtml

You may have read something of late about the battle over so-called "C Band spectrum," the wireless frequencies that lie between 3.7 GHz and 4.2 GHz. This spectrum will be hugely beneficial for deploying 5G wireless, and wireless carriers and activists alike have been pressuring the FCC for years to repurpose much of it for 5G. How this should be done has been a point of contention, however. And given there's upwards of $60 billion to be made off of auctioning this spectrum, the typical alliances you'll see in telecom have been more complicated than usual.

Consumer advocates want the spectrum auctioned off publicly by the FCC, allowing it to be transparently bought by folks in rural areas eager to use it for point-to-point backhaul and rural broadband expansion. Satellite providers, unified under the C-Band Alliance, have been opposed to public auction and instead want the spectrum auctioned off behind closed doors, promising they'd then kick back some of the money to the FCC (read: American taxpayers, who technically own the airwaves in question). Incumbent wireless carriers have split opinions on how to proceed, with T-Mobile backing a public auction.