LMR licensing activity with FCC improves for business-industrial, but remains near historical lows

Land-mobile-radio (LMR) licensing during the third quarter exhibited some encouraging activity during the third quarter, particularly in the business-industrial arena that has been lackluster for several years, based on figures provided by the FCC’s online database.

As of Oct. 5, the FCC’s Universal Licensing System (ULS) reveals that the agency has received 2,389 public-safety LMR licensing applications, with 2,331 having been approved and 58 pending. If this application pace is maintained and all pending applications are approved, the projected total of public-safety licenses would be 3,136.6—a figure just slightly less that the 3,151 public-safety licenses that were approved last year.

Whether the number of public-safety licenses will increase for a third consecutive year will depend on activity during the final quarter of the year, but it appears likely that the number of license approvals for the sector will exceed 3,000. This would mark the third time in a row that public-safety license approvals would exceed the 3,000 threshold since the pandemic-induced total of 2,763—the all-time low annual total—was posted in 2020.

In fact, other than the apparent aberration of 2020, public-safety licensing activity has been remarkably consistent during the other five years since 2018. If the current projection is realized during the fourth quarter, 2023 would be fifth time during this period that the public-safety licensing figure would be between 3,194 and 3,059.

However, these figures still mark a significant decrease when compared to public-safety licensing totals during the 23-year history of the FCC’s online ULS. Barring an unexpectedly active fourth quarter, the past six years will represent the six lowest totals for the sector during the online ULS era.

The consistent public-safety licensing total represent roughly a 70% decline when compared to the 10,602 all-time high total in 2012 (a period influenced significantly by the FCC’s narrowbanding mandate) and more than a 35% decrease when compared to the 5,082 licenses approved for the sector in 2014.

Within the business-industrial sector, the ULS database indicates that the FCC received 7,602 LMR applications through Oct. 5, with 7,311 of them being approved. If this pace is maintained and all pending applications are approved, the year-end licensing total is projected to be 9,981.0.

If realized, this projected figure would represent the greatest total of business-industrial licenses approved by the FCC since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S. during 2020. It also would represent the second consecutive year of growth for business-industrial LMR licensing activity since the sector posted an all-time-low total of 9,425 in 2021.

But even with these recent increases, the business-industrial licensing totals are well below historical norms. The last four years would represent the four lowest annual business-industrial figures in the 23-year history of the online ULS, and would mark the only years in which the total licenses approved in the sector have dropped below 10,000.

A broader comparison reveals that they business-industrial licensing levels during the past four years represent a decrease of more than 65% from the all-time high of 29,569 license approved in 2012—again, at the peak of the FCC’s narrowbanding mandate—and a decrease of approximately 45% from the 17,865 licenses granted in the sector during 2015.