US FCC: NextNav petition on the 900 MHz RFID band

The single biggest spectrum risk to RAIN RFID in the US. NextNav wants to reorganise the band RAIN readers use for a terrestrial positioning network; industry bodies argue it would cause interference to millions of readers.

In the US, RAIN RFID readers share the unlicensed 902 to 928 MHz band, and RFID News reported in September 2026 that NextNav's plan puts its uplink at 902 to 907 MHz and its downlink at 918 to 928 MHz, squeezing RFID and other shared users into 907 to 918 MHz.

For reader makers the issue is channel count. Under the FCC frequency-hopping rule a reader may transmit at 1 W only if it hops across at least 50 channels, and US readers typically use 50 channels at 500 kHz spacing, which would not fit into 11 MHz without narrower channels, lower data rates and slower reads. Integrators would need to know whether installed readers can be recertified or must be replaced.

Outside the US the concern is divergence: Europe's 918.7 MHz upper-band channel sits inside the slice NextNav wants. The petition is pending with no FCC decision; we reported that a draft Notice of Proposed Rulemaking went for White House interagency review in March 2026.