Image credit: House Energy and Commerce Committee
What’s new: A congressional hearing titled Where Are We?: Examining Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Capabilities in the United States.
Why it’s important:
- The hearing is being held by the Communications and Technology Subcommittee which has responsibility for overseeing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
- The FCC has interested itself in PNT since it received a petition from NextNav asking for $5B in spectrum in exchange for establishing a terrestrial PNT system to backup GPS.
- The National Assn. of Broadcasters also has a petition before the FCC which, among other things, seeks a requirement for TV broadcasters to migrate to a new format. That new format would enable, among other things, the Broadcast Positioning System.
- As a result of these petitions the FCC issued a 27 page Notice of Inquiry about PNT and received over 140 responses.
What else to know:
- We understand the panel at the hearing will be:
- Lisa Dyer, Executive Director, GPS Innovation Alliance (GPSIA)
- Mariam Sorond, Board Chair and Chief Executive Officer, NextNav
- Harold Feld, Senior Vice President, Public Knowledge
- J. David Grossman, Vice President, Policy & Regulatory Affairs, Consumer Technology Association
- Sam Matheny, Executive Vice President, Broadcast Positioning System, National Association of Broadcasters
- RNT Foundation submitted comments for the record (we did so before it was formally announced, so we got the title of the hearing wrong in the letter). We urged the committee to require the FCC to:
- Use fair and open competition before selecting any company to receive anything of value in exchange for provision of equipment and/or services to backup GPS,
- Clearly specify performance requirements – including accuracy, availability, continuity, integrity, resilience, and service area – when contracting for or agreeing to support an effort to establish a backup capability for GPS, and
- Work in close collaboration with the Department of Transportation and the Department of War because they, not the FCC, are responsible for leading the nation’s PNT efforts. Previous efforts by one or two federal entities to establish a GPS backup capability have failed because they did not have sufficient consensus within the administration.
Chairmen Guthrie and Hudson Announce Hearing on Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Capabilities
May 28, 2026
Communications & Technology
Press Release
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Congressman Brett Guthrie (KY-02), Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Congressman Richard Hudson (NC-09), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, announced a hearing titled Where Are We?: Examining Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Capabilities in the United States.
“The U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) underlies critical technologies Americans use and rely on every day, but many people may not realize GPS applications extend far beyond the map apps on their phones,” said Chairmen Guthrie and Hudson. “From national defense and critical infrastructure, such as banking and energy, to the daily routines of nearly every American, even a temporary GPS outage would drastically affect hundreds of millions of lives. We look forward to a conversation about how we can strengthen positioning, navigation, and timing services to maximize resiliency and reliability.”
Subcommittee on Communications and Technology hearing titled Where Are We?: Examining Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Capabilities in the United States.
WHAT: Subcommittee on Communications & Technology hearing on positioning, navigation, and timing capabilities.
DATE: Thursday, June 4, 2026
TIME: 10:15 AM ET
LOCATION: 2123 Rayburn House Office Building
This notice is at the direction of the Chairman. The hearing will be open to the public and press and will be livestreamed online at energycommerce.house.gov. If you have any questions concerning this hearing, please contact Noah Jackson with the Committee staff at [email protected]. If you have any press-related questions, please contact Daniel Kelly at [email protected].
