“Seeing Is Believing”—If You’re Allowed to Watch

A 59-Second Video Is Not a Coexistence Study

NextNav published a blog post on May 5, 2026, titled “Seeing Is Believing: NextNav Demonstrates 5G and RFID Coexistence in the Lower 900 MHz Band.”

The company filmed engineers on a San Jose, California, rooftop on May 4, waved an RFID reader near one of its base stations and declared the coexistence question settled. Problem solved. Nothing to see here.

Except there’s quite a lot to see—starting with what NextNav didn’t tell anyone: the crucial details before staging this demonstration.

A Test No One Knew Was Happening

Just before NextNav’s rooftop video was released, representatives of the Security Industry Association (SIA), Pericle Communications Company, the Utilities Technology Council and the Connected Devices for America Coalition met with staff from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Wireless Telecommunications Bureau and Office of Engineering and Technology. The subject of that meeting was the nearly complete absence of publicly available information about NextNav’s experimental network operations in San Jose.

At that meeting, our coalition put 15 specific technical questions to the FCC, including:

• When is the network operational, and for how many hours per day?
• Which base stations and sectors are being used, and at what azimuth and tilt?
• What is the effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP) for each sector in use?
• What is the channel bandwidth, number of PRBs and subcarrier spacing?
• What is the positioning reference signal (PRS) configuration—comb pattern, bandwidth, repetition and periodicity?
• Will sector-by-sector operational data—including PAPR, ERP, loading factor, time on air and uplink RSSI—be made publicly available after testing concludes?
• Are user equipment software-defined radios transmitting back to base stations, or only receiving? If collecting IQ data, will that data be shared publicly?

Not one of these questions has been answered. And yet, NextNav published a video purporting to demonstrate that coexistence concerns are unfounded. Government agencies do not rely on video testimonials as a basis for approving proposals, which in this case, would radically upend existing, critical, life-saving operations in the band.

Why the Missing Details Matter

Without knowing what technical parameters were actually used during the test, it is impossible to evaluate whether the demonstration has any relevance to real-world deployment conditions.

The questions SIA and its coalition partners posed to the FCC go to the heart of whether a test is scientifically meaningful. Was the base station operating at full power or at a reduced EIRP level that would not reflect actual 5G network conditions? Was the network passing real data traffic, or was it configured to transmit only PRS with minimal loading? What was the channel configuration? How close was the base station antenna actually pointed towards the RFID reader?

The answers to these questions determine whether a staged demonstration is a rigorous coexistence test or a controlled performance designed to produce a favorable visual.

We don’t know the answers. The FCC doesn’t have the answers in the public record. Congress and the public don’t have the answers. And NextNav has brazenly refused to provide them.

What’s Actually at Stake

The 902-928 MHz band—the Lower 900 MHz band—is home to devices that communities, consumers, businesses and infrastructure operators depend on every day, including:

• Public safety communications
• Devices supporting railroad and transportation operations
• Smart meters and other technologies critical to managing the electric grid
• Security alarm systems protecting homes and businesses across the country

Many of these safety and security systems rely on the Lower 900 MHz band for their communications links, and replacing or retrofitting them carries real costs.

That is why the integrity of the coexistence analysis matters so much. If NextNav’s 5G network can genuinely coexist with these incumbent uses without causing harmful interference, that case should be demonstrable through transparent, independently verifiable testing. A video clip filmed without notice to interested parties, using undisclosed parameters, is not that test.

We have a company blatantly refusing to answer basic technical questions and then publishing a marketing video as proof that the skeptics are wrong—that is not how sound spectrum policy is made. This is not sound engineering.

“Seeing is believing” is a fine slogan. But when life-safety services are at risk, slogans are not enough. The Commission, Congress and the public deserve to see the full picture—not just the parts NextNav has decided to show them to manipulate perceptions of their proposed system.