Airports, subways, etc…a good fit for CBRS small cells
The 3.5 GHz Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) band is the subject of much attention in the telecom community. As the U.S. Federal Communications Commission works toward formalizing a three-tiered spectrum access systems to divvy up access to the band, operators and vendors are prepping for quick commercialization of CBRS.
In a recent blog post, Nokia’s Ashish Dayama discussed the opportunities associated with neutral host models using CBRS compatible small cells to support multiple operators. Dayama contrasts this deployment scenario with a more traditional, and expensive, distributed antenna system.
From the blog: “Large public  venues, and transport hubs like subway stations, airports and railway stations need to be neutral hosts for broadband services – allowing subscribers from all service providers to be invited.
“Implementation is no easy party trick however. You have limited space, which  means you can’t accommodate everyone’s network. How would you connect to everyone’s network without their equipment? How would you add each new provider to the existing network? Which mobile operator will allow other providers to use their costly spectrum? How can one operator keep its current subscribers happy, while also serving another operators’ subscribers? In other words, it’s no easy feat to be a neutral host.”
By way of a solution, Dayama calls out Nokia’s CBRS small cell, which was demonstrated during Mobile World Congress Americas in San Francisco. Here’s a video of that demo.
