Public-safety LMR licensing activity has increased significantly thus far this year—in fact, the current pace would represent more than 40 per cent jump, if continued throughout the rest of 2025—according to information from the FCC’s online Universal Licensing System (ULS) database
By Donny Jackson, Editor
Public-safety LMR licensing activity has increased significantly thus far this year—in fact, the current pace would represent more than 40 per cent jump, if continued throughout the rest of 2025—according to information from the FCC’s online Universal Licensing System (ULS) database.
Through the first five months of the year, the FCC has received 1,787 licensing applications and has granted 1,452 of them, according to the online ULS database. If this pace of licensing activity is maintained throughout 2025, the number of granted licenses thus far project to 3,486.7 licenses for the year, which would be a 16.7 per cent increase compared to last year and the highest total since 3,959 public-safety LMR licenses were granted in 2016.
This is particularly noteworthy, given the lackluster LMR licensing activity in the sector during the past seven years, when the annual total of public-safety LMR granted has been less than 3,200 every year and dipped below 3,000 last year—the second-lowest total since the online ULS database was established fully in 2001.
Projections for 2025 could be even more remarkable, if the 335 pending public-safety LMR applications are approved. This top-end potential total of 1,787 applications through the end of May projects to a year-end total of 4,291.1—a figure that would be the largest for the sector since 2015, when the FCC granted 4,248 public-safety LMR licenses. If realized, this total would represent a 43.7 per cent increase when compared to 2024.
While such a total would be very significant in light of the lackluster public-safety licensing during the past eight years, it would have been considered closer to a baseline total just a decade ago, as the FCC granted at least 4,248 public-safety LMR licenses during each of the 14 years from 2002 through 2015.
In contrast, the pace of business-industrial LMR licensing this year is hovering at levels comparable to recent years. The sector’s 4,229 applications through the month of May—644 of which are pending approval from the FCC—project to 10,155.2 for the full year. Last year, the FCC granted 10,733 business-industrial LMR licenses, which marked the first time the sector topped the 10,000 threshold in five years.
And the 2024 business-industrial licensing activity still ranked among the lower totals in the 24-year history of the FCC’s only ULS database. The 2024 figure marked the eighth consecutive year that the business-industrial entities has failed to have 11,000 LMR licenses granted by the FCC—a stark contrast to the previous 16 years, when the agency annually approved at least 11,256 LMR licenses for the sector.
Based on the business-industrial LMR licensing pace set during the first five month of 2025, it appears doubtful that this string of sub-11,000 licenses granted in the sector will be broken this year.
